DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Priority
Applicant’s claim for the benefit of a prior-filed provisional application No. 63/112,304, filed on 11/11/2020, under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) or under 35 U.S.C. 120, 121, 365(c), or 386(c) is acknowledged.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 9/15/2025 has been entered.
Claims 1, 10 and 17 are presently amended.
Claims 3, 11 and 18 are canceled.
Claims 25 is newly added.
Claims 1, 2, 4-10, 12, 13, 15-17, 19, and 20-25 are pending.
Response to Amendment
Applicant’s amendments are acknowledged.
Response to Arguments
Applicant' s arguments filed 9/15/2025 have been fully considered in view of further consideration of statutory law, Office policy, precedential common law, and the cited prior art as necessitated by the amendments to the claims, but are not persuasive for the reasons set forth below.
35 USC § 101 Rejections
First, Applicant argues that “the patent-eligibility of the claims is further highlighted by similarities between said subject matter and that of the claims at issue in Core Wireless. The MPEP refers to Core Wireless as one of many examples of subject matter eligibility…
Like Core Wireless, the pending claims are directed at an improved user interface. Specifically, the claims describe first and second dashboards (e.g., interfaces) that include various parameters and indicators regarding an employee and their capabilities. These dashboards are generated “using information from a presentation server and based on ... collected responses [to a generated and presented questionnaire].” Application, claim 1; see also id., claims 10 and 17 (reciting similar limitations). The claims are patent-eligible for at least this additional reason.
' As argued in the previous office action response (filed Dec. 12, 2024), (i) the claims are not directed to the abstract idea of organizing human activity and (ii) even if they were, they recite significantly more than the judicial exception. Applicant maintains these positions…” [Arguments, page 11].
In response, Applicant’s arguments are considered but are not persuasive. Examiner respectfully disagrees and maintains that the presently amended claims are directed to a judicial exception without significantly more. With respect to Core Wireless, the claims were considered to show an improvement in computer functionality through an improved user interface for electronic devices that displays an application summary of unlaunched applications, where the particular data in the summary is selectable by a user to launch the respective application. Core Wireless Licensing S.A.R.L., v. LG Electronics, Inc., 880 F.3d 1356, 1362-63, 125 USPQ2d 1436, 1440-41 (Fed. Cir. 2018). The claims contain precise language delimiting the type of data to be displayed and how to display it, thus improving upon conventional user interfaces to increase the efficiency of using mobile devices.
In contrast, the user interfaces of the present claims recite generic employee and manager interfaces for displaying experience, skill and trait data in no particular arrangement. Examiner respectfully considers the interfaces to be claimed in a manner that does not impose a meaningful limit on the judicial exception. Thus, the present claims, when considered as a whole and in light of the recited additional elements, are considered no more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the judicial exception. As such, Examiner remains unpersuaded.
35 USC § 103 Rejections
First, Applicant argues that “The Office Action cites Sabet as disclosing the first feature. Office Action, 24-26. Sabet describes “doing natural language processing on meeting invites.” Sabet, ¶ [0199] (emphasis added). Separately, Sabet also describes “a reputation ranking system ... based on data accumulated from people who have had real interactions with the PAM [Performance Analytics Metrics] ..., reducing the possibility that the ranking is manipulated or derived from irrelevant sources.” Id., ¶ [0136]…
Sabet’s natural language processing has nothing to do with “exclud[ing] from consideration one or more irrelevant communications.” Application, claim 1. Rather, Sabet teaches processing meeting invitations “to identify cases where disagreement is likely ... [or] cases where a problem may have been resolved independently.” Sabet, ¶ [0199]. Moreover, Sabet’s mention of “reducing the possibility that the ranking is ... derived from irrelevant sources” is unrelated to the reference’s discussion of natural language processing therefore and does not cure the deficiency…” [Arguments, pages 12-13].
In response Applicant’s arguments are considered but are not persuasive. With regard to the assertion that,” Sabet’s natural language processing has nothing to do with “exclud[ing] from consideration one or more irrelevant communications.””, Examiner respectfully disagrees and directs the Applicant to (Sabet, ¶ 92, the Classification Module 204 may calculate how much time the person spends in meetings versus working alone. Using various information processing techniques, such as natural language processing methods, the system may assign a likelihood that each specific calendar activity falls into a more general activity type. Activity types might include, without limitation: travel time, 1-on-1 meetings, group meetings, presentations, training, social event, customer meeting, support call, individual working session or conference. From this analysis, the system can generate an activity map for the person showing the person how he spends his time among these different kinds of activity types).
Here, Sabet discloses the use of natural language processing to classify activity types, including various types of communications such as meetings, presentations and conferences. Examiner further directs the Applicant to (Sabet, ¶ 130, FIG. 12 shows an embodiment of example inputs into the PAM application, and example outputs from the PAM application using data generated by an Analysis Module 206. FIG. 12 shows an example of how different activity types may be generated by the PAM. From the results of the Classification Modules, the Analysis Module 206 may generate an activity map showing the person how he spends his time among different kinds of activity types. From the results of the Classification Modules, the Analysis Module 206 may generate various benchmark dashboards showing where the person's profile stands as compared with others within selected cohorts. As an example, the person can choose to see a benchmark dashboard of how his salary compares with other Finance Directors or how his title compares with others in medium sized technology companies with 10 years of experience. Using other information that can be collected from person profiles, the Analysis Module 206 can show other benchmarks such as the how recently persons from the same cohort that have taken on new roles. After receiving a set of attributes; and generating questions that provide reliable evidence of an attribute for a person; one or more feedback questions are generated by matching the attributes associated with the generated question to the attributes associated with the person and the interaction), (Id., ¶ 135, The Analysis Module 206 may also use feedback results to create an explicit rating or reputation for that person. As an example, if the analysis of a particular person's feedback shows that a particular attribute X has a high consistency score as well as a high aptitude score, the system may translate these scores into an explicit rating that the system, or the person, can post to the person's profile. In this example, the system may have calculated a rating for a person of 7.5 out of a total of 10 for the attribute “inspiring presentations”), and to (Id., ¶ 136, Such a reputation ranking system improves upon existing alternatives because it is based on data accumulated from people who have had real interactions with the PAM being ranked that are relevant to the attribute being ranked, reducing the possibility that the raking is manipulated or derived from irrelevant sources. (discloses identifying irrelevant communications) In addition, the anonymity of the feedback increases the likelihood of authenticity of the rankings).
Here, the analysis module of Sabet uses the results of the classification module (which uses natural language processing techniques) to determine a ranking and attribute (e.g. “inspiring presentations”) in a way that excludes irrelevant communications, in accordance with the present claims. Thus, Examiner respectfully maintains that the art of record renders the above-argued limitation of the present claims obvious. As such, Examiner remains unpersuaded.
Second, Applicant argues that “For the second feature, the Office Action cites to Chen. Office Action, 19-21. Chen describes measuring user productivity “based upon feedback and/or surveys completed by other task participants, or even by third parties.” Chen, ¶ [0123] (emphasis added). It also describes an “other information field 369 [that] can store additional information or notes about each user.” Id. The operator or owner of “a server” can input such information or notes via the field 369. Id.
Although Chen mentions “feedback” and “surveys,” it says nothing about either being “based on previously collected responses pertaining to the experience and efficiency of the user.” Application, claim 1. Additionally, although Chen describes a server, it fails to teach generating its feedback or surveys “using information” from the server. Id…” [Arguments, page 13].
In response Applicant’s arguments are considered but are not persuasive. With regard to the assertion that, “Although Chen mentions “feedback” and “surveys,” it says nothing about either being “based on previously collected responses pertaining to the experience and efficiency of the user.””, Examiner respectfully disagrees and directs the Applicant to (Chen, ¶ 114, the user management module 359 can monitor the users or participants in the system to determine how effective the users are in meeting task deadlines and expectations. For example, the user management module 359 may monitor the number and/or percentage of tasks in which each user meets or beats the listed deadline, e.g., due date, for a task. The user management module 359 may also monitor the productivity of each user or task participant. For example, the user management module 359 can measure the efficiency of each user, e.g., how long it takes the user to complete a task. In further arrangements, the user management module 359 can measure the productivity of a user based on feedback given by other task participants. For example, if User 1 is viewed as being a team player or an exceptionally talented contributor by User 1's collaborators, then the user management module 359 may determine that User 1 is a valuable user. The user management module 359 can accordingly sort and organize users according to task efficiency and productivity, and can prioritize users (e.g., employees, vendors, customers, etc.), according to their efficiency, quality of work, and/or productivity), and to (Id., ¶ 123, A contact list field 367 can store the contact list associated with each user. As explained above, the contact list can include a list of all users with which the user has participated in a task. Further, an associated documents field 362 can list documents that are associated with the user and/or the tasks associated with the user. Similarly, a task history field 364 can store the subject matter and/or keywords associated with tasks on which the user has collaborated in the past. Other users or organizations can exploit the task history field 364 to leverage users' prior experiences with a particular task or project. For example, a search engine can be provided to search for keywords and/or subject matter of prior tasks and/or task participants. A user timeliness field 366 and a user efficiency field 368 can be provided to monitor whether or not a user timely meets expected due dates and how fast a user completes various tasks. The company or organization can thereby compare users' efficiencies and reliability when making decisions. A user productivity field 370 may also be included to measure how productive a user is at a series of tasks or projects. For example, user productivity may be measured based upon feedback and/or surveys completed by other task participants, or even by third parties. (A miscellaneous, other information field 369 can store additional information or notes about each user. For example, if the owner and/or operator of the server has additional information or a history with a particular user, then the owner and/or operator of the server can input this information into the other information field 369).
Here, Chen discloses the use of feedback and surveys in order to determine efficiency and experience of an employee. Examiner respectfully maintains that, because the survey/feedback elements disclosed by Chen solicits responses from a plurality of participants or third parties, the survey is necessarily based on previously collected response in order to produce the efficiency and feedback scores. Further, with respect to the assertion that Chen fails to teach generating its feedback or surveys “using information” from the server, Examiner respectfully disagrees and directs the Applicant to (Chen, ¶ 101, the task creation packet 213, which can correspond to an e-mail task creation packet 220, can be sent by e-mail from the task creator 211 to the task recipients 214 and to the server 215. The packet 220 can include task identifying information as well as task content data which can be viewed by the task participants. As explained below in more detail, the server 215 can receive and process the task creation packet 213, and can perform various other task management functions. For example, the server 215 can coordinate scheduling and accountability for performance of the tasks 204 and can also process and analyze data about the users, e.g., the task participants), and to (Id., ¶ 102, FIG. 3 is a schematic block diagram of a task management system 315, in accordance with one embodiment. The task management system 315 can include multiple modules that can be implemented and/or stored on a server, such as the server 215 described above. The task management system 315 can include a task management module 327, which can include a task creation module 329, an object management module 346, and a user interface module 341.
Here, Chen discloses a server which works in communication with various modules of the system, including a task creation module and interface module, wherein such modules would be used to generate the survey in accordance with the present invention. Thus, Examiner respectfully maintains that the art of record renders the above-argued limitation of the present claims obvious. As such, Examiner remains unpersuaded.
Third, Applicant argues that “for the third and fourth limitations, the Office Action cites to Sabet and Chen, respectively. Office Action, 30-31 (addressing third limitation), 19-22 (addressing fourth limitation). Figure 13 of Sabet illustrates a “dashboard” with various “[b]enchmark dashboards.” Sabet, ¶ [0131]-[0132]. 002245-5008-US 13 Response to Final Office Action.
However, whether considered separately or in combination, neither Sabet nor Chen teach or suggest each feature of the claimed first and second dashboards. Specifically, the first dashboard “comprises (i) one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) one or more skill levels for the employee, and (iii) one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee.” Application, claim 1. The second dashboard “comprises (i) the one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) the one or more skill levels for the employee, (i111) the one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee, (iv) an organizational parameter not included in the first dashboard, and (v) indicators of whether the employee is a low performing employee, whether the employee exhibits low job satisfaction, whether the employee exhibits high burnout characteristics, and whether the employee is likely to resign in an immediate future.” Id., claim 1.
For at least these reasons, the independent claims are not rendered obvious by the proposed combination of Panigrahi, Chen, and Sabet. The Office Action does not cite the other supplemental reference, Lang, as curing the combination’s deficiencies…” [Arguments, pages 13-14].
In response Applicant’s arguments are considered but Applicant's arguments fail to comply with 37 CFR 1.111(b) because they amount to a general allegation that the claims define a patentable invention without specifically pointing out how the language of the claims patentably distinguishes them from the references. Thus, Examiner respectfully maintains that the art of record renders the above-argued interfaces of the present claims obvious for the reasons set forth in the rejection below. As such, Examiner remains unpersuaded.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1, 2, 4-10, 12, 13, 15-17, 19, and 20-25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
Step 1: Claims 1, 2, 4-10, 12, 13, 15-17, 19, and 20-25 are directed to statutory categories, namely a process (claims 1-2, 4-9 and 21-25), a machine (claims 10 and 12-16) and an article of manufacture (claims 17 and 19-20).
Step 2A, Prong 1: Claims 1, 10 and 17 in part, recite the following abstract idea:
…A… method of using … to generate different dashboards, the method comprising: identifying, based on data from… a plurality of communications involving an employee, wherein the plurality of communications comprises…; generating a list of actual collaborators with the employee based on (i) the plurality of communications and (ii) … thereof to exclude from consideration one or more irrelevant communications of the plurality of communications, wherein … of the plurality of communications comprises identifying specific semantic constructs within the plurality of communications; identifying, based on data from… , an organizational structure comprising the employee and (i) a manager of the employee or (ii) a subordinate of the employee; generating a list of presumed collaborators with the employee based on the organizational structure; merging the list of actual collaborators and the list of presumed collaborators into a collaboration circle of the employee; generating, using information from… , a questionnaire for determining experience and efficiency of the employee, wherein the questionnaire is based on previously collected responses pertaining to the experience and efficiency of the employee; presenting the questionnaire to the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle; collecting responses to the questionnaire from the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle; generating, using information from … and based on the collected responses, a first dashboard and a second dashboard that each visually represent the experience and efficiency of the employee; allowing the employee to access the first dashboard, which comprises (i) one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) one or more skill levels for the employee, and (iii) one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee; and allowing the manager of the employee to access the second dashboard, wherein the second dashboard comprises (i) the one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) the one or more skill levels for the employee, (iii) the one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee, (iv) an organizational parameter not included in the first dashboard, and (v) indicators of whether the employee is a low performing employee, whether the employee exhibits low job satisfaction, whether the employee exhibits high burnout characteristics, and whether the employee is likely to resign in an immediate future [Claim 1],
…identify, based on data from… a plurality of communications involving an employee, wherein the plurality of communications comprises…; generate a list of actual collaborators with the employee based on (i) the plurality of communications and (ii) … thereof to exclude from consideration one or more irrelevant communications of the plurality of communications, wherein … of the plurality of communications comprises identifying specific semantic constructs within the plurality of communications; identify, based on data from… , an organizational structure comprising the employee and (i) a manager of the employee or (ii) a subordinate of the employee; generate a list of presumed collaborators with the employee based on the organizational structure; merge the list of actual collaborators and the list of presumed collaborators into a collaboration circle of the employee; generate, using information from… , a questionnaire for determining experience and efficiency of the employee, wherein the questionnaire is based on previously collected responses pertaining to the experience and efficiency of the employee; present the questionnaire to the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle; collect responses to the questionnaire from the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle; generate, using information from … and based on the collected responses, a first dashboard and a second dashboard that each visually represent the experience and efficiency of the employee; allow the employee to access the first dashboard, which comprises (i) one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) one or more skill levels for the employee, and (iii) one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee; and allow the manager of the employee to access the second dashboard, wherein the second dashboard comprises (i) the one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) the one or more skill levels for the employee, (iii) the one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee, (iv) an organizational parameter not included in the first dashboard, and (v) indicators of whether the employee is a low performing employee, whether the employee exhibits low job satisfaction, whether the employee exhibits high burnout characteristics, and whether the employee is likely to resign in an immediate future [Claim 10],
…identify, based on data from… a plurality of communications involving an employee, wherein the plurality of communications comprises…; generate a list of actual collaborators with the employee based on (i) the plurality of communications and (ii) … thereof to exclude from consideration one or more irrelevant communications of the plurality of communications, wherein … of the plurality of communications comprises identifying specific semantic constructs within the plurality of communications; identify, based on data from… , an organizational structure comprising the employee and (i) a manager of the employee or (ii) a subordinate of the employee; generate a list of presumed collaborators with the employee based on the organizational structure; merge the list of actual collaborators and the list of presumed collaborators into a collaboration circle of the employee; generate, using information from… , a questionnaire for determining experience and efficiency of the employee, wherein the questionnaire is based on previously collected responses pertaining to the experience and efficiency of the employee; present the questionnaire to the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle; collect responses to the questionnaire from the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle; generate, using information from … and based on the collected responses, a first dashboard and a second dashboard that each visually represent the experience and efficiency of the employee; allow the employee to access the first dashboard, which comprises (i) one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) one or more skill levels for the employee, and (iii) one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee; and allow the manager of the employee to access the second dashboard, wherein the second dashboard comprises (i) the one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) the one or more skill levels for the employee, (iii) the one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee, (iv) an organizational parameter not included in the first dashboard, and (v) indicators of whether the employee is a low performing employee, whether the employee exhibits low job satisfaction, whether the employee exhibits high burnout characteristics, and whether the employee is likely to resign in an immediate future [Claim 17].
These concepts are not meaningfully different than the following concepts identified by the MPEP:
Concepts relating to certain methods of organizing human activity. The aforementioned limitations describe steps for managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people, including social activities, teaching, and following rules or instructions. Specifically, generating dashboards reflecting experience, efficiency and collaborators of an employee is considered to describe steps for managing personal behavior as well as steps for managing relationships or interactions between people. As such, claims 1, 10 and 17 recite concepts identified as abstract ideas.
The dependent claims recite limitations relative to the independent claims, including, for example:
…wherein the plurality of documents comprises a plurality of… [Claim 2],
…wherein identifying the collaboration circle further comprises: generating a list of actual collaborators by analyzing the plurality of documents reflecting communications of the specified person; identifying one or more presumed collaborators of the specified person by analyzing an organizational structure; merging the list of actual collaborators and the list of presumed collaborators [Claim 3],
…wherein generating the set of questions further comprises: identifying a category which received a lowest aggregated response value in a previous survey; identifying, for the identified category, a predefined number of sub-categories which received lowest, among all sub-categories, numbers of answered questions in the previous survey; generating, for identified sub-category, a predefined number of survey questions [Claim 4].
The limitations of these dependent claims are merely narrowing the abstract idea identified in the independent claims, and thus, the dependent claims also recite abstract ideas.
Step 2A, Prong 2: This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, claims 1, 10 and 17 only recite the following additional elements –
…computer-implemented… a distributed computer system… an information extraction server… digital or telephonic communications…; …a natural language processing… the natural language processing…; …a corporate directory server…; …a smart survey server…; …a presentation server… [Claim 1],
…A system, comprising: a memory; and a processor coupled to the memory, wherein the processor is configured to… an information extraction server… digital or telephonic communications…; …a natural language processing… the natural language processing…; …a corporate directory server…; …a smart survey server…; …a presentation server… [Claim 10],
…A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising executable instructions that, when executed by a computer system, cause the computer system to… an information extraction server… digital or telephonic communications…; …a natural language processing… the natural language processing…; …a corporate directory server…; …a smart survey server…; …a presentation server… [Claim 17].
The independent claims only recite the following new additional elements –
… electronic mail messages [Claim 2],
…a structured electronic mail message, a structured instant message, and a structured voicemail transcription… [Claim 21].
The computer system, servers, processor and executable instructions are recited at a high-level of generality (see MPEP § 2106.05(a)), like the following MPEP example:
iii. Gathering and analyzing information using conventional techniques and displaying the result, TLI Communications, 823 F.3d at 612-13, 118 USPQ2d at 1747-48;
Furthermore, the computer implemented element is considered to amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component (see MPEP 2106.05(f)), like the following MPEP example:
i. A commonplace business method or mathematical algorithm being applied on a general purpose computer, Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. V. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208, 223, 110 USPQ2d 1976, 1983 (2014); Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63, 64, 175 USPQ 673, 674 (1972); Versata Dev. Group, Inc. v. SAP Am., Inc., 793 F.3d 1306, 1334, 115 USPQ2d 1681, 1701 (Fed. Cir. 2015);
Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application.
The remaining dependent claims do not recite any new additional elements, and thus do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application.
Step 2B: Claims 1, 10 and 17 and their underlying limitations, steps, features and terms, considered both individually and as a whole, do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception for the following reasons:
Independent claims 1, 10 and 17 only recite the following additional elements –
…computer-implemented… a distributed computer system… an information extraction server… digital or telephonic communications…; …a natural language processing… the natural language processing…; …a corporate directory server…; …a smart survey server…; …a presentation server… [Claim 1],
…A system, comprising: a memory; and a processor coupled to the memory, wherein the processor is configured to… an information extraction server… digital or telephonic communications…; …a natural language processing… the natural language processing…; …a corporate directory server…; …a smart survey server…; …a presentation server… [Claim 10],
…A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising executable instructions that, when executed by a computer system, cause the computer system to… an information extraction server… digital or telephonic communications…; …a natural language processing… the natural language processing…; …a corporate directory server…; …a smart survey server…; …a presentation server… [Claim 17].
These elements do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea for the reasons discussed in 2A prong 2 with regard to MPEP 2106.05(a) and MPEP 2106.05(f). By the failure of the elements to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application there, the additional elements likewise fail to amount to an inventive concept that is significantly more than an abstract idea here, in Step 2B.
As such, both individually or in combination, these limitations do not add significantly more to the judicial exception.
The remaining dependent claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the dependent claims do not recite any new additional elements other than those mentioned in the independent claims, which amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component (see MPEP 2106.05(f)). As such, these claims are not patent eligible.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-2, 6-10, 14-17 and 21-24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Panigrahi et al., U.S. Publication No. 2013/0132864 [hereinafter Panigrahi] in view of Chen et al., U.S. Publication No. 2016/0224939 [hereinafter Chen], and in further view of Sabet et al., U.S. Publication No. 2016/0260044 [hereinafter Sabet].
Regarding claim 1, Panigrahi discloses …A computer-implemented method of using a distributed computer system to generate different dashboards, the method comprising: identifying, based on data from an information extraction server, a plurality of communications involving an employee, wherein the plurality of communications comprises digital or telephonic communications (Panigrahi, ¶ 35, the social network 12 includes computer code for hosting various conversations 26-30 pertaining to different business objects and for hosting different social profiles 32 of enterprise personnel), (Id., ¶ 40, Information pertaining to associations between business objects, kudos, and conversations may be maintained via the social kudos controller 24, e.g., via a business object associations module 44, and/or via one or more other modules in the system 10. The example social kudos controller 34 further includes a social conversation collection and tracking module 46, a social kudos collection module 50, and a kudos statistics generator 48, which may intercommunicate. The social kudos collection module 50 may collect copies of kudos when they are issued via the social network 12 and other ERP software 14-18. Similarly, the social conversation collection and tracking module 46 may store text and other input pertaining to conversations occurring via the social network 12 and other ERP software 14-18), (Id., ¶ 54, FIG. 3 shows a second example user interface display screen 80 illustrating text of a second discussion 82 occurring via a social network (such as the social network 12 of FIG. 1) and further illustrating user interface controls 86 for providing discussion input and assigning kudos to input provided by discussion participants), (Id., ¶ 33, The example system 10 includes a social network 12, which may include various social networking websites, business social networks (also called enterprise social networks), and other software and systems adapted to enable conversations or collaboration between individuals. For the purposes of the present discussion, a conversation may be any communication exchange between two or more persons. A conversation may include text and/or other input, such as uploaded or shared presentations, documents, audio files, or other files (discloses digital communications)), (Id., ¶ 55, In the present example embodiment, a message representing conversation input is selected by a user, such as participant Jules Hendersen. A kudos user option, i.e., user interface control 88, may then be selected by Jules Hendersen to facilitate adding a kudos for Nicole Kelly based on or associated with the selected input 84 of Nicole Kelly. A note field 96 enables the kudos giver, e.g., Jules Hendersen, to add a note to be further associated with or included in the kudos. After a kudos note, e.g., text pertaining to positive feedback, has been entered, and the kudos control 88 is selected, the kudos is registered as being associated with Nicole Kelly's input 84 in the conversation 82, which is associated with a business object, e.g., Pinnacle Green Server ROI 98), (Id., Fig. 3, Figure depicts identifying a collaboration circle for a user based on communications);
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While suggested in at least Fig. 7 and related text, Panigrahi does not explicitly disclose … generating a list of actual collaborators with the employee based on (i) the plurality of communications and (ii) a natural language processing thereof to exclude from consideration one or more irrelevant communications of the plurality of communications, wherein the natural language processing of the plurality of communications comprises identifying specific semantic constructs within the plurality of communications; identifying, based on data from a corporate directory server, an organizational structure comprising the employee and (i) a manager of the employee or (ii) a subordinate of the employee; generating a list of presumed collaborators with the employee based on the organizational structure; merging the list of actual collaborators and the list of presumed collaborators into a collaboration circle of the employee; generating, using information from a smart survey server, a questionnaire for determining experience and efficiency of the employee, wherein the questionnaire is based on previously collected responses pertaining to the experience and efficiency of the employee; presenting the questionnaire to the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle; collecting responses to the questionnaire from the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle; generating, using information from a presentation server and based on the collected responses, a first dashboard and a second dashboard that each visually represent the experience and efficiency of the employee; allowing the employee to access the first dashboard, which comprises (i) one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) one or more skill levels for the employee, and (iii) one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee; and allowing the manager of the employee to access the second dashboard, wherein the second dashboard comprises (i) the one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) the one or more skill levels for the employee, (iii) the one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee, (iv) an organizational parameter not included in the first dashboard, and (v) indicators of whether the employee is a low performing employee, whether the employee exhibits low job satisfaction, whether the employee exhibits high burnout characteristics, and whether the employee is likely to resign in an immediate future.
However, Chen discloses … generating, using information from a smart survey server, a questionnaire for determining experience and efficiency of the employee, wherein the questionnaire is based on previously collected responses pertaining to the experience and efficiency of the employee; presenting the questionnaire to the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle; collecting responses to the questionnaire from the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle (Chen, ¶ 114, the user management module 359 can monitor the users or participants in the system to determine how effective the users are in meeting task deadlines and expectations. For example, the user management module 359 may monitor the number and/or percentage of tasks in which each user meets or beats the listed deadline, e.g., due date (discloses employee experience), for a task. The user management module 359 may also monitor the productivity of each user or task participant. For example, the user management module 359 can measure the efficiency of each user (discloses employee efficiency), e.g., how long it takes the user to complete a task. In further arrangements, the user management module 359 can measure the productivity of a user based on feedback given by other task participants. For example, if User 1 is viewed as being a team player or an exceptionally talented contributor by User 1's collaborators, (discloses feedback received by the collaborators of a user) then the user management module 359 may determine that User 1 is a valuable user. The user management module 359 can accordingly sort and organize users according to task efficiency and productivity, and can prioritize users (e.g., employees, vendors, customers, etc.), according to their efficiency, quality of work, and/or productivity), (Id., ¶ 123, A contact list field 367 can store the contact list associated with each user. As explained above, the contact list can include a list of all users with which the user has participated in a task. Further, an associated documents field 362 can list documents that are associated with the user and/or the tasks associated with the user. Similarly, a task history field 364 can store the subject matter and/or keywords associated with tasks on which the user has collaborated in the past. Other users or organizations can exploit the task history field 364 to leverage users' prior experiences with a particular task or project. For example, a search engine can be provided to search for keywords and/or subject matter of prior tasks and/or task participants. A user timeliness field 366 and a user efficiency field 368 can be provided to monitor whether or not a user timely meets expected due dates and how fast a user completes various tasks. The company or organization can thereby compare users' efficiencies and reliability when making decisions. A user productivity field 370 may also be included to measure how productive a user is at a series of tasks or projects. For example, user productivity may be measured based upon feedback and/or surveys completed by other task participants, or even by third parties. (discloses questionnaire) A miscellaneous, other information field 369 can store additional information or notes about each user. For example, if the owner and/or operator of the server has additional information or a history with a particular user, then the owner and/or operator of the server can input this information (discloses survey server) into the other information field 369);
…and a second dashboard that each visually represent the experience and efficiency of the employee; and allowing the manager of the employee to access the second dashboard, wherein the second dashboard comprises (i) the one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) the one or more skill levels for the employee, (iii) the one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee, (iv) an organizational parameter not included in the first dashboard, and (v) indicators of whether the employee is a low performing employee, whether the employee exhibits low job satisfaction, whether the employee exhibits high burnout characteristics, and whether the employee is likely to resign in an immediate future (Id., ¶ 65, a task analytics dashboard, or user interface, can be presented to company- or organization-level executives or managers. (discloses dashboard for managers) The dashboard can include various pages that illustrate user productivity and user relationships, as well as project data and topic data. The dashboard can analyze task data that is aggregated by the task management system and can be presented to a decision-maker to assist in making decisions. For example, in some embodiments, the dashboard can help decision-makers with internal personnel or task assignment decisions. In addition, the dashboard can help decision-makers with high-level decisions regarding competitors, business partners, the future direction of a particular product line, etc), (Id., ¶ 160, as shown in the data box 1012 of FIG. 10B, a decision-maker can select user productivity/number of tasks, work quality (e.g., based off peer, client, or supervisor feedback, etc.) (discloses employee skill level), on-time task completion percentage (discloses indicators of low performance/burnout), user relationships (discloses leadership trait indicators) (e.g., based on the task participant relationship map 800), and any other suitable data set. In the company snapshot view 1008 of FIG. 10B, the task on-time percentage data set has been selected, and a graph is presented to the user or decision-maker that illustrates the percentage that each user (e.g., employee) of the company completes an assigned task on time. Skilled artisans will understand that other data sets are possible), (Id., ¶ 114, the user management module 359 can monitor the users or participants in the system to determine how effective the users are in meeting task deadlines and expectations. For example, the user management module 359 may monitor the number and/or percentage of tasks in which each user meets or beats the listed deadline, e.g., due date (discloses employee experience), for a task. The user management module 359 may also monitor the productivity of each user or task participant. For example, the user management module 359 can measure the efficiency of each user (discloses employee efficiency), e.g., how long it takes the user to complete a task. In further arrangements, the user management module 359 can measure the productivity of a user based on feedback given by other task participants),
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It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have modified the collaboration circle and communication document elements of Panigrahi to include the employee survey elements of Chen in the analogous art of providing feedback for task participants.
The motivation for doing so would have been to improve the ability to “sort and organize users according to task efficiency and productivity, and can prioritize users (e.g., employees, vendors, customers, etc.), according to their efficiency, quality of work, and/or productivity.” (Chen, ¶ 114), wherein such improvements would benefit Panigrahi’s method which enables the ability to “incrementally benefit from timely feedback and need not wait for the completion of a review process to act upon important feedback, which could improve worker performance and overall enterprise productivity” [Chen, ¶ 114; Panigrahi, ¶ 16].
While suggested in at least Fig. 7 and related text of Panigrahi, the combination of Panigrahi and Chen does not explicitly disclose … generating a list of actual collaborators with the employee based on (i) the plurality of communications and (ii) a natural language processing thereof to exclude from consideration one or more irrelevant communications of the plurality of communications, wherein the natural language processing of the plurality of communications comprises identifying specific semantic constructs within the plurality of communications; identifying, based on data from a corporate directory server, an organizational structure comprising the employee and (i) a manager of the employee or (ii) a subordinate of the employee; generating a list of presumed collaborators with the employee based on the organizational structure; merging the list of actual collaborators and the list of presumed collaborators into a collaboration circle of the employee; generating, using information from a presentation server and based on the collected responses, a first dashboard…; allowing the employee to access the first dashboard, which comprises (i) one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) one or more skill levels for the employee, and (iii) one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee.
However, Sabet discloses …generating a list of actual collaborators with the employee based on (i) the plurality of communications and (ii) a natural language processing thereof to exclude from consideration one or more irrelevant communications of the plurality of communications, wherein the natural language processing of the plurality of communications comprises identifying specific semantic constructs within the plurality of communications (Sabet, ¶ 85, One of more Input Modules 202 may receive data through integrations with other systems or through manual inputs. The Input Module may automatically pull content and associated meta data from multiple sources, including but not limited to, a person's contacts, calendar, email, phone logs and other individual accounts. This data may be used by the system to analyze how, with whom and for what general purpose the person is spending his time), (Id., ¶ 86, As another example, the system can receive information from enterprise systems such as enterprise CRM databases or corporate directories, or from the person's social network or social media accounts, or contextual information from the person's device such as GPS data, thereby increasing the contextual understanding of a person's interactions and increasing the accuracy of identifying the correct activity type. These sources of information also provide the system with data about the person that can be used to complete the person's profile for the purpose of connecting the person to different person cohorts for benchmarking purposes), (Id., ¶ 246, FIG. 22 (depicts generated list of collaborators) provides an embodiment of obtaining aggregated feedback using PAM. PAM makes performance management an everyday activity. Each employee will review aggregated feedback from everyone they interact with 2202, not just their manager, and not just people within their company. In one embodiment, the questions are contextualized by the type of interaction. In another embodiment, feedback from multiple sources in various contexts 2206 on the same standard question set enables personalized analytics. Dashboards 2204 are displayed with various metrics 2206 displayed enabling personalized analytics. Collection of data that is available for performance development resources for a cohort and processing recommended actions or goals of all people in a cohort to allocate available performance development resources based upon the processed recommended actions or goals is done using PAM. The resources are allocated in a manner to achieve the greatest impact on performance of a person or of the cohort based on performance data collected for persons identified having high performance indicators), (Id., ¶ 92, the Classification Module 204 may calculate how much time the person spends in meetings versus working alone. Using various information processing techniques, such as natural language processing methods (discloses identifying semantic constructs using natural language processing), the system may assign a likelihood that each specific calendar activity falls into a more general activity type. Activity types might include, without limitation: travel time, 1-on-1 meetings, group meetings, presentations, training, social event, customer meeting, support call, individual working session or conference. From this analysis, the system can generate an activity map for the person showing the person how he spends his time among these different kinds of activity types), (Id., ¶ 199, By doing natural language processing on meeting invites looking for phrases such as “make a determination” or “resolve whether to” to identify cases where disagreement is likely, or “demonstrate approach” or “review solution” for cases where a problem may have been resolved independently), (Id., ¶ 135, The Analysis Module 206 may also use feedback results to create an explicit rating or reputation for that person. As an example, if the analysis of a particular person's feedback shows that a particular attribute X has a high consistency score as well as a high aptitude score, the system may translate these scores into an explicit rating that the system, or the person, can post to the person's profile. In this example, the system may have calculated a rating for a person of 7.5 out of a total of 10 for the attribute “inspiring presentations”. This rating could be used in this form in the person's reputation rating, or it can be translated to other another form of rating such as 4 out of 5 stars, or a certain sized bubble representing the quantity of the rating), (Id., ¶ 136, Such a reputation ranking system improves upon existing alternatives because it is based on data accumulated from people who have had real interactions with the PAM being ranked that are relevant to the attribute being ranked, reducing the possibility that the raking is manipulated or derived from irrelevant sources. (discloses identifying irrelevant communications) In addition, the anonymity of the feedback increases the likelihood of authenticity of the rankings).
Through KSR Rationale C (See MPEP 2141(III)(C)), the combination of Chen and Sabet discloses .. identifying, based on data from a corporate directory server, an organizational structure comprising the employee and (i) a manager of the employee or (ii) a subordinate of the employee; generating a list of presumed collaborators with the employee based on the organizational structure; merging the list of actual collaborators and the list of presumed collaborators into a collaboration circle of the employee.
First, Chen discloses …A corporate directory server as well as identifying potential collaborators based on an organizational structure (Chen, ¶ 83, Each network 105 can be, for example, a company intranet or support Website hosted on one or more servers. The users 102 can be members of the network 105, and can interact with the network 105 using a user interface (UI) through a device such as a computer, tablet, personal digital assistant (PDA) and/or mobile phone. Each user can be prompted for a password before logging into the network 105 in some embodiments. In other arrangements, however, each network 105 can be accessed over the World Wide Web. The global network 100 can include all associated users 102. Each user 102 of the global network 100 may belong to one or more individual networks 105, or may only belong to the global network 100 and not to any particular individual network 105. If a user 102 is a member of a particular individual network 105, the user 102 can log in to the network 105, create a task 104 in the network 105, and assign the task 104 to network users 102. Alternatively, a user 102 may create tasks 104 in the global network 100 and assign the task 104 to the user's contacts. A particular task 104 may be created in and may belong to a particular network 105. As explained herein, a network identifier, or network ID, can associate a task 104 with a particular network 105, or with the global network 100), (Id., ¶ 62, the task management system can include a task analytics module or system that enables users to spawn networks within their own companies or organizations and that enables organizations to analyze relationships associated with tasks performed by members of the organization. Indeed, because the task management system can monitor the e-mail and/or network IDs of the users that utilize the system, the task management system can sort the system users and task participants according to organizations and/or companies with which they are affiliated. As users of new organizations or companies are invited to participate in tasks with current users, the task management system can enable the newly added or invited users to create, or spawn, their own networks within their company or organization. For example, one embodiment is a people-relationship map that is generated to allow managers of a company to view the relationships of people in their organization with others (discloses organizational structure map). In this embodiment, the system tracks ongoing projects between different individuals within, and outside of, a company and can map those relationships. This allows the system to create graphs and maps of relationships that can be used to determine who is currently working with particular individuals, the scope of work being performed, and who is completing and performing their tasks in a timely manner (discloses presumed collaborators based on an organizational structure map)).
Further, Sabet discloses a list of actual collaborators of an employee (Sabet, ¶ 86, As another example, the system can receive information from enterprise systems such as enterprise CRM databases or corporate directories, or from the person's social network or social media accounts, or contextual information from the person's device such as GPS data, thereby increasing the contextual understanding of a person's interactions and increasing the accuracy of identifying the correct activity type. These sources of information also provide the system with data about the person that can be used to complete the person's profile for the purpose of connecting the person to different person cohorts for benchmarking purposes), (Id., ¶ 246, FIG. 22 (depicts generated list of collaborators) provides an embodiment of obtaining aggregated feedback using PAM. PAM makes performance management an everyday activity. Each employee will review aggregated feedback from everyone they interact with 2202, not just their manager, and not just people within their company. In one embodiment, the questions are contextualized by the type of interaction. In another embodiment, feedback from multiple sources in various contexts 2206 on the same standard question set enables personalized analytics. Dashboards 2204 are displayed with various metrics 2206 displayed enabling personalized analytics. Collection of data that is available for performance development resources for a cohort and processing recommended actions or goals of all people in a cohort to allocate available performance development resources based upon the processed recommended actions or goals is done using PAM. The resources are allocated in a manner to achieve the greatest impact on performance of a person or of the cohort based on performance data collected for persons identified having high performance indicators), (Id., ¶ 114, FIG. 6 illustrates the intelligent performance analytics 506 components. The back end intelligence 620 has modules directly interfacing the persons who are individuals, groups and company through modules individuals 602, group 604 and company 606 respectively. The backend intelligence contains the six main modules namely backend person/user interface 608, backend classification 610, backend communication 612, backend analysis platform 614, backend data analytics 616 and backend profile and collaboration 618. The back end intelligence is connected to a redundant knowledgebase 508. The performance metrics data generated from the processing of responses is combined with other performance metrics data generated for that person over time to generate a reputation profile for that person).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention
to have scanned the combined the list of presumed collaborators, as disclosed in Chen, with a list of actual collaborators as in the improvement discussed in Sabet in the system executing the method of Chen. As in Sabet, it is within the capabilities of one of ordinary skill in the art to utilize communications and corporate directory data to determine a list of collaborators to be compared with a list of presumptive collaborators as determined by communication and ongoing project data, with the predicted result of accurately identifying relationships and efficiencies of employees as needed in Chen.
Thus, through KSR Rationale C (See MPEP 2141(III)(C)), the combination of Chen and Sabet discloses .. identifying, based on data from a corporate directory server, an organizational structure comprising the employee and (i) a manager of the employee or (ii) a subordinate of the employee; generating a list of presumed collaborators with the employee based on the organizational structure; merging the list of actual collaborators and the list of presumed collaborators into a collaboration circle of the employee.
Sabet further discloses … generating, using information from a presentation server and based on the collected responses, a first dashboard…; allowing the employee to access the first dashboard, which comprises (i) one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) one or more skill levels for the employee, and (iii) one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee (Sabet, ¶ 131, FIG. 13 shows the dashboard of the person (employee) so he can start entering data and set goals for My Improve .sup.R list. This graphical person interface is made to be simple and not intimidating. The different modules described in FIG. 2 provide support as a system and process using seamless architecture. FIG. 13 shows an embodiment of example inputs into the PAM application, and example outputs from the PAM application using data generated by an Analysis module 206. FIG. 13 also shows another example of an output using data generated by an Analysis Module 206. From the results of the Classification Module, the Analysis Module 206 can generate a feedback template for every classified calendar event and prompt the person to provide feedback through the template), (Id., ¶ 132, As an example, an Analysis Module 206 may receive data from an Input Module 202 that a person has just completed an interaction such as a meeting, phone call, or other event or activity. The Analysis Module 206 may then request from a Classification Module 204 the feedback type associated with the activity type for that interaction. Upon receiving the feedback type data, the Analysis Module 206 may require a Communication Module 214 to send an automated feedback request notification, based on that feedback type, to workforce participants who participated in the interaction soliciting feedback about the person. Feedback received will flow back to the Analysis Module 206 for various analyses as described below (discloses collecting feedback responses)), (Id., ¶ 133, Rating scores from feedback received from Input Modules 202 may be aggregated using robust statistics to assess both the “aptitude” for the attribute (discloses skill level) (for example determined by the median score), and the “consistency” of the attribute (discloses efficiency parameter) (for example determined by the interquartile range). From the results of the feedback, the system can generate various performance dashboards showing how the person performs according to all activities, or different kinds of activities, or according to different kinds of attributes), (Id., ¶ 135, The Analysis Module 206 may also use feedback results to create an explicit rating or reputation for that person. As an example, if the analysis of a particular person's feedback shows that a particular attribute X has a high consistency score as well as a high aptitude score, the system may translate these scores into an explicit rating that the system, or the person, can post to the person's profile. In this example, the system may have calculated a rating for a person of 7.5 out of a total of 10 for the attribute “inspiring presentations”. (discloses leadership trait indicators) This rating could be used in this form in the person's reputation rating, or it can be translated to other another form of rating such as 4 out of 5 stars, or a certain sized bubble representing the quantity of the rating).
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It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have modified the collaboration circle and communication document elements of Panigrahi to include the employee survey elements of Chen to include the dashboard and organization structure elements of Sabet in the analogous art of assessing performance metrics and use of the same.
The motivation for doing so would have been to provide an improved “system and method for assessing a performance metrics...”, wherein, “…performance metrics are generated and processed using interaction and relationship profiles, feedback inputs, and career trajectory over time by combining aggregate data for a person and across many persons. More specifically performance analytics metric (PAM) identifies the typical career trajectory and the competencies, skills, and timelines adherent to obtaining career objectives for a person” (Sabet, ¶ 2), wherein such improvements would benefit Chen’s method which seeks to improve the ability to “sort and organize users according to task efficiency and productivity, and can prioritize users (e.g., employees, vendors, customers, etc.), according to their efficiency, quality of work, and/or productivity.” (Chen, ¶ 114), and wherein such improvements would further benefit Panigrahi’s method which enables the ability to “incrementally benefit from timely feedback and need not wait for the completion of a review process to act upon important feedback, which could improve worker performance and overall enterprise productivity” [Sabet, ¶ 2; Chen, ¶ 114; Panigrahi, ¶ 16].
Regarding claim 2, the combination of Panigrahi, Chen and Sabet discloses …The computer-implemented method of claim 1…
Panigrahi further discloses …wherein the plurality of communications comprises a plurality of electronic mail messages (Panigrahi, ¶ 69, FIG. 6 shows a sixth example user interface display screen 150 illustrating user interface features 156, 158 that facilitate allocating a kudos via an email client plugin. The example user interface display screen 150 includes a listing of email messages 152 adjacent to a kudos plugin window 154), (Id., ¶ 83, while the present application is discussed with respect to systems and methods for enabling kudos to be exchanged between participants in a social network conversation while participating the conversation; by visiting a social network profile; or by employing kudos functionality of an email client plugin, embodiments are not limited thereto. For example, kudos functionality may be added to virtually any collaborative software or applications that can retrieve content from the Internet or other network. Hence, various example web conferencing applications may be augmented with kudos functionality as discussed herein, without departing from the scope of the present teachings).
Regarding claim 6, the combination of Panigrahi, Chen and Sabet discloses …The computer-implemented method of claim 1…
While suggested in at least Fig. 7 and related text, Panigrahi does not explicitly disclose … wherein the dashboard visually represents a set of employee experience parameters for a chosen organizational unit.
However, Chen discloses …wherein the dashboard visually represents a set of employee experience parameters for a chosen organizational unit (Chen, ¶ 162, Turning to FIG. 10C, the project analytics page 1004 is illustrated. In the illustrated example, the project analytics page 1004 is shown for the projects conducted by a particular user group, which in the case of FIG. 10C can be Company A. As explained herein, a particular project may include one or more related tasks, such as a project directed to organizing a banquet for a new product launch. The project analytics page 1004 can present project data to a decision-maker. For example, the project analytics page 1004 can include a project list box 1016 that lists the current, ongoing projects in which the company or organization is involved. Alternatively, a search box can be provided to allow the decision-maker to search for a particular project. A decision-maker, such as a manager or executive, can select a project from the project list box 1016. In FIG. 10C, for example, Project 4 is selected. The project analytics page 1004 can include a user list box 1018 showing all the users within the company or organization that are participating in Project 4. Furthermore, a user productivity view 1022 can illustrate a chart or table showing the productivity of each user involved in Project 4. For example, in FIG. 10C, the user productivity view 1022 illustrates the number of tasks assigned to each user involved in Project 4. In addition, as explained herein with respect to the project relationship map 820 of FIG. 8B, the project analytics page 1004 can include an external participants list box 1020 that lists the task participants that are not members or employees of the company. For example, as shown in the list box 1020 in FIG. 10C, Company C, Organization Z, and Company D may also be participating in Project 4. Decision-makers can use the data presented in the external participants list box 1020 to analyze external relationships associated with a project or with groups of projects), (Id., Fig. 10C, Figure depicts employee experience parameters for a chosen project group), (Id., ¶ 168, the system can sort user data by productivity (number of tasks), efficiency, timeliness, user relationships, etc. In various embodiments, the aggregated task data can be presented to a user in a dashboard, such as the interfaces shown in FIGS. 10A-10D).
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It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have modified the collaboration circle and communication document elements of Panigrahi to include the employee experience elements of Chen in the analogous art of providing feedback for task participants for the same reasons as stated for claim 1.
Regarding claim 7, the combination of Panigrahi, Chen and Sabet discloses …The computer-implemented method of claim 1…
While suggested in at least Fig. 7 and related text, Panigrahi does not explicitly disclose … wherein the dashboard visually represents a set of employee efficiency parameters for a chosen organizational unit.
However, Chen discloses …wherein the dashboard visually represents a set of employee efficiency parameters for a chosen organizational unit (I, ¶ 114, the user management module 359 can monitor the users or participants in the system to determine how effective the users are in meeting task deadlines and expectations. For example, the user management module 359 may monitor the number and/or percentage of tasks in which each user meets or beats the listed deadline, e.g., due date, for a task. The user management module 359 may also monitor the productivity of each user or task participant. For example, the user management module 359 can measure the efficiency of each user (discloses employee efficiency), e.g., how long it takes the user to complete a task. In further arrangements, the user management module 359 can measure the productivity of a user based on feedback given by other task participants. For example, if User 1 is viewed as being a team player or an exceptionally talented contributor by User 1's collaborators, (discloses feedback received by the collaborators of a user) then the user management module 359 may determine that User 1 is a valuable user. The user management module 359 can accordingly sort and organize users according to task efficiency and productivity, and can prioritize users (e.g., employees, vendors, customers, etc.), according to their efficiency, quality of work, and/or productivity), (Id., ¶ 168, the system can sort user data by productivity (number of tasks), efficiency, timeliness, user relationships, etc. In various embodiments, the aggregated task data can be presented to a user in a dashboard, such as the interfaces shown in FIGS. 10A-10D).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have modified the collaboration circle and communication document elements of Panigrahi to include the employee efficiency elements of Chen in the analogous art of providing feedback for task participants for the same reasons as stated for claim 1.
Regarding claim 8, the combination of Panigrahi, Chen and Sabet discloses …The computer-implemented method of claim 1…
Panigrahi further discloses …wherein the dashboard visually represents a set of employee skills and corresponding skill levels of the employee based on responses by one or more members of the collaboration circles (Panigrahi, ¶ 72, FIG. 7 shows a seventh example user interface display screen 170 illustrating an example performance review document 172 with collected kudos 174 and a first navigation user interface control 176. The first navigation user interface control 176 represents a user option to navigate to a user interface display screen for viewing details of a business object associated with a kudos. A second navigation control 178 represents a user option to navigate to a user interface display screen for viewing details of a conversation associated with a kudos. In the present example embodiment, the kudos 174 are associated with an opportunity business object, e.g., Pinnacle Opportunity 176), (Id. Fig. 7, figure depicts a set of employee competencies based on feedback survey responses).
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Regarding claim 9, the combination of Panigrahi, Chen and Sabet discloses …The computer-implemented method of claim 1…
Panigrahi further discloses … wherein the dashboard visually represents a set of employee leadership traits and corresponding leadership trait levels of the employee based on responses by one or more members of the collaboration circles (Panigrahi, ¶ 72, FIG. 7 shows a seventh example user interface display screen 170 illustrating an example performance review document 172 with collected kudos 174 and a first navigation user interface control 176. The first navigation user interface control 176 represents a user option to navigate to a user interface display screen for viewing details of a business object associated with a kudos. A second navigation control 178 represents a user option to navigate to a user interface display screen for viewing details of a conversation associated with a kudos. In the present example embodiment, the kudos 174 are associated with an opportunity business object, e.g., Pinnacle Opportunity 176), (Id. Fig. 7, figure depicts a set of employee leadership competencies based on feedback survey responses).
Regarding claim 10, Panigrahi discloses …A system, comprising: a memory (Panigrahi, ¶ 85, Particular embodiments may be implemented in a computer-readable storage medium for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system, apparatus, system, or device. Particular embodiments can be implemented in the form of control logic in software or hardware or a combination of both. The control logic, when executed by one or more processors, may be operable to perform that which is described in particular embodiments);
and a processor coupled to the memory, wherein the processor is configured to: : identify, based on data from an information extraction server, a plurality of communications involving an employee, wherein the plurality of communications comprises digital or telephonic communications (Panigrahi, ¶ 35, the social network 12 includes computer code for hosting various conversations 26-30 pertaining to different business objects and for hosting different social profiles 32 of enterprise personnel), (Id., ¶ 40, Information pertaining to associations between business objects, kudos, and conversations may be maintained via the social kudos controller 24, e.g., via a business object associations module 44, and/or via one or more other modules in the system 10. The example social kudos controller 34 further includes a social conversation collection and tracking module 46, a social kudos collection module 50, and a kudos statistics generator 48, which may intercommunicate. The social kudos collection module 50 may collect copies of kudos when they are issued via the social network 12 and other ERP software 14-18. Similarly, the social conversation collection and tracking module 46 may store text and other input pertaining to conversations occurring via the social network 12 and other ERP software 14-18), (Id., ¶ 54, FIG. 3 shows a second example user interface display screen 80 illustrating text of a second discussion 82 occurring via a social network (such as the social network 12 of FIG. 1) and further illustrating user interface controls 86 for providing discussion input and assigning kudos to input provided by discussion participants), (Id., ¶ 33, The example system 10 includes a social network 12, which may include various social networking websites, business social networks (also called enterprise social networks), and other software and systems adapted to enable conversations or collaboration between individuals. For the purposes of the present discussion, a conversation may be any communication exchange between two or more persons. A conversation may include text and/or other input, such as uploaded or shared presentations, documents, audio files, or other files (discloses digital communications)), (Id., ¶ 55, In the present example embodiment, a message representing conversation input is selected by a user, such as participant Jules Hendersen. A kudos user option, i.e., user interface control 88, may then be selected by Jules Hendersen to facilitate adding a kudos for Nicole Kelly based on or associated with the selected input 84 of Nicole Kelly. A note field 96 enables the kudos giver, e.g., Jules Hendersen, to add a note to be further associated with or included in the kudos. After a kudos note, e.g., text pertaining to positive feedback, has been entered, and the kudos control 88 is selected, the kudos is registered as being associated with Nicole Kelly's input 84 in the conversation 82, which is associated with a business object, e.g., Pinnacle Green Server ROI 98), (Id., Fig. 3, Figure depicts identifying a collaboration circle for a user based on communications);
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While suggested in at least Fig. 7 and related text, Panigrahi does not explicitly disclose … generate a list of actual collaborators with the employee based on (i) the plurality of communications and (ii) a natural language processing thereof to exclude from consideration one or more irrelevant communications of the plurality of communications, wherein the natural language processing of the plurality of communications comprises identifying specific semantic constructs within the plurality of communications; identify, based on data from a corporate directory server, an organizational structure comprising the employee and (i) a manager of the employee or (ii) a subordinate of the employee; generate a list of presumed collaborators with the employee based on the organizational structure; merge the list of actual collaborators and the list of presumed collaborators into a collaboration circle of the employee; generate, using information from a smart survey server, a questionnaire for determining experience and efficiency of the employee, wherein the questionnaire is based on previously collected responses pertaining to the experience and efficiency of the employee; present the questionnaire to the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle; collect responses to the questionnaire from the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle; generate, using information from a presentation server and based on the collected responses, a first dashboard and a second dashboard that each visually represent the experience and efficiency of the employee; allowing the employee to access the first dashboard, which comprises (i) one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) one or more skill levels for the employee, and (iii) one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee; and allow the manager of the employee to access the second dashboard, wherein the second dashboard comprises (i) the one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) the one or more skill levels for the employee, (iii) the one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee, (iv) an organizational parameter not included in the first dashboard, and (v) indicators of whether the employee is a low performing employee, whether the employee exhibits low job satisfaction, whether the employee exhibits high burnout characteristics, and whether the employee is likely to resign in an immediate future.
However, Chen discloses … generate, using information from a smart survey server, a questionnaire for determining experience and efficiency of the employee, wherein the questionnaire is based on previously collected responses pertaining to the experience and efficiency of the employee; present the questionnaire to the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle; collect responses to the questionnaire from the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle (Chen, ¶ 114, the user management module 359 can monitor the users or participants in the system to determine how effective the users are in meeting task deadlines and expectations. For example, the user management module 359 may monitor the number and/or percentage of tasks in which each user meets or beats the listed deadline, e.g., due date (discloses employee experience), for a task. The user management module 359 may also monitor the productivity of each user or task participant. For example, the user management module 359 can measure the efficiency of each user (discloses employee efficiency), e.g., how long it takes the user to complete a task. In further arrangements, the user management module 359 can measure the productivity of a user based on feedback given by other task participants. For example, if User 1 is viewed as being a team player or an exceptionally talented contributor by User 1's collaborators, (discloses feedback received by the collaborators of a user) then the user management module 359 may determine that User 1 is a valuable user. The user management module 359 can accordingly sort and organize users according to task efficiency and productivity, and can prioritize users (e.g., employees, vendors, customers, etc.), according to their efficiency, quality of work, and/or productivity), (Id., ¶ 123, A contact list field 367 can store the contact list associated with each user. As explained above, the contact list can include a list of all users with which the user has participated in a task. Further, an associated documents field 362 can list documents that are associated with the user and/or the tasks associated with the user. Similarly, a task history field 364 can store the subject matter and/or keywords associated with tasks on which the user has collaborated in the past. Other users or organizations can exploit the task history field 364 to leverage users' prior experiences with a particular task or project. For example, a search engine can be provided to search for keywords and/or subject matter of prior tasks and/or task participants. A user timeliness field 366 and a user efficiency field 368 can be provided to monitor whether or not a user timely meets expected due dates and how fast a user completes various tasks. The company or organization can thereby compare users' efficiencies and reliability when making decisions. A user productivity field 370 may also be included to measure how productive a user is at a series of tasks or projects. For example, user productivity may be measured based upon feedback and/or surveys completed by other task participants, or even by third parties. (discloses questionnaire) A miscellaneous, other information field 369 can store additional information or notes about each user. For example, if the owner and/or operator of the server has additional information or a history with a particular user, then the owner and/or operator of the server can input this information (discloses survey server) into the other information field 369);
…and a second dashboard that each visually represent the experience and efficiency of the employee; and allow the manager of the employee to access the second dashboard, wherein the second dashboard comprises (i) the one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) the one or more skill levels for the employee, (iii) the one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee, (iv) an organizational parameter not included in the first dashboard, and (v) indicators of whether the employee is a low performing employee, whether the employee exhibits low job satisfaction, whether the employee exhibits high burnout characteristics, and whether the employee is likely to resign in an immediate future (Id., ¶ 65, a task analytics dashboard, or user interface, can be presented to company- or organization-level executives or managers. (discloses dashboard for managers) The dashboard can include various pages that illustrate user productivity and user relationships, as well as project data and topic data. The dashboard can analyze task data that is aggregated by the task management system and can be presented to a decision-maker to assist in making decisions. For example, in some embodiments, the dashboard can help decision-makers with internal personnel or task assignment decisions. In addition, the dashboard can help decision-makers with high-level decisions regarding competitors, business partners, the future direction of a particular product line, etc), (Id., ¶ 160, as shown in the data box 1012 of FIG. 10B, a decision-maker can select user productivity/number of tasks, work quality (e.g., based off peer, client, or supervisor feedback, etc.) (discloses employee skill level), on-time task completion percentage (discloses indicators of low performance/burnout), user relationships (discloses leadership trait indicators) (e.g., based on the task participant relationship map 800), and any other suitable data set. In the company snapshot view 1008 of FIG. 10B, the task on-time percentage data set has been selected, and a graph is presented to the user or decision-maker that illustrates the percentage that each user (e.g., employee) of the company completes an assigned task on time. Skilled artisans will understand that other data sets are possible), (Id., ¶ 114, the user management module 359 can monitor the users or participants in the system to determine how effective the users are in meeting task deadlines and expectations. For example, the user management module 359 may monitor the number and/or percentage of tasks in which each user meets or beats the listed deadline, e.g., due date (discloses employee experience), for a task. The user management module 359 may also monitor the productivity of each user or task participant. For example, the user management module 359 can measure the efficiency of each user (discloses employee efficiency), e.g., how long it takes the user to complete a task. In further arrangements, the user management module 359 can measure the productivity of a user based on feedback given by other task participants),
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It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have modified the collaboration circle and communication document elements of Panigrahi to include the employee survey elements of Chen in the analogous art of providing feedback for task participants for the same reasons as stated for claim 1.
While suggested in at least Fig. 7 and related text of Panigrahi, the combination of Panigrahi and Chen does not explicitly disclose … generate a list of actual collaborators with the employee based on (i) the plurality of communications and (ii) a natural language processing thereof to exclude from consideration one or more irrelevant communications of the plurality of communications, wherein the natural language processing of the plurality of communications comprises identifying specific semantic constructs within the plurality of communications; identify, based on data from a corporate directory server, an organizational structure comprising the employee and (i) a manager of the employee or (ii) a subordinate of the employee; generate a list of presumed collaborators with the employee based on the organizational structure; merge the list of actual collaborators and the list of presumed collaborators into a collaboration circle of the employee; generate, using information from a presentation server and based on the collected responses, a first dashboard…; allow the employee to access the first dashboard, which comprises (i) one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) one or more skill levels for the employee, and (iii) one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee.
However, Sabet discloses … generate a list of actual collaborators with the employee based on (i) the plurality of communications and (ii) a natural language processing thereof to exclude from consideration one or more irrelevant communications of the plurality of communications, wherein the natural language processing of the plurality of communications comprises identifying specific semantic constructs within the plurality of communications (Sabet, ¶ 85, One of more Input Modules 202 may receive data through integrations with other systems or through manual inputs. The Input Module may automatically pull content and associated meta data from multiple sources, including but not limited to, a person's contacts, calendar, email, phone logs and other individual accounts. This data may be used by the system to analyze how, with whom and for what general purpose the person is spending his time), (Id., ¶ 86, As another example, the system can receive information from enterprise systems such as enterprise CRM databases or corporate directories, or from the person's social network or social media accounts, or contextual information from the person's device such as GPS data, thereby increasing the contextual understanding of a person's interactions and increasing the accuracy of identifying the correct activity type. These sources of information also provide the system with data about the person that can be used to complete the person's profile for the purpose of connecting the person to different person cohorts for benchmarking purposes), (Id., ¶ 246, FIG. 22 (depicts generated list of collaborators) provides an embodiment of obtaining aggregated feedback using PAM. PAM makes performance management an everyday activity. Each employee will review aggregated feedback from everyone they interact with 2202, not just their manager, and not just people within their company. In one embodiment, the questions are contextualized by the type of interaction. In another embodiment, feedback from multiple sources in various contexts 2206 on the same standard question set enables personalized analytics. Dashboards 2204 are displayed with various metrics 2206 displayed enabling personalized analytics. Collection of data that is available for performance development resources for a cohort and processing recommended actions or goals of all people in a cohort to allocate available performance development resources based upon the processed recommended actions or goals is done using PAM. The resources are allocated in a manner to achieve the greatest impact on performance of a person or of the cohort based on performance data collected for persons identified having high performance indicators), (Id., ¶ 92, the Classification Module 204 may calculate how much time the person spends in meetings versus working alone. Using various information processing techniques, such as natural language processing methods (discloses identifying semantic constructs using natural language processing), the system may assign a likelihood that each specific calendar activity falls into a more general activity type. Activity types might include, without limitation: travel time, 1-on-1 meetings, group meetings, presentations, training, social event, customer meeting, support call, individual working session or conference. From this analysis, the system can generate an activity map for the person showing the person how he spends his time among these different kinds of activity types), (Id., ¶ 199, By doing natural language processing on meeting invites looking for phrases such as “make a determination” or “resolve whether to” to identify cases where disagreement is likely, or “demonstrate approach” or “review solution” for cases where a problem may have been resolved independently), (Id., ¶ 135, The Analysis Module 206 may also use feedback results to create an explicit rating or reputation for that person. As an example, if the analysis of a particular person's feedback shows that a particular attribute X has a high consistency score as well as a high aptitude score, the system may translate these scores into an explicit rating that the system, or the person, can post to the person's profile. In this example, the system may have calculated a rating for a person of 7.5 out of a total of 10 for the attribute “inspiring presentations”. This rating could be used in this form in the person's reputation rating, or it can be translated to other another form of rating such as 4 out of 5 stars, or a certain sized bubble representing the quantity of the rating), (Id., ¶ 136, Such a reputation ranking system improves upon existing alternatives because it is based on data accumulated from people who have had real interactions with the PAM being ranked that are relevant to the attribute being ranked, reducing the possibility that the raking is manipulated or derived from irrelevant sources. (discloses identifying irrelevant communications) In addition, the anonymity of the feedback increases the likelihood of authenticity of the rankings).
Through KSR Rationale C (See MPEP 2141(III)(C)), the combination of Chen and Sabet discloses … identify, based on data from a corporate directory server, an organizational structure comprising the employee and (i) a manager of the employee or (ii) a subordinate of the employee; generate a list of presumed collaborators with the employee based on the organizational structure; merge the list of actual collaborators and the list of presumed collaborators into a collaboration circle of the employee.
First, Chen discloses …A corporate directory server as well as identifying potential collaborators based on an organizational structure (Chen, ¶ 83, Each network 105 can be, for example, a company intranet or support Website hosted on one or more servers. The users 102 can be members of the network 105, and can interact with the network 105 using a user interface (UI) through a device such as a computer, tablet, personal digital assistant (PDA) and/or mobile phone. Each user can be prompted for a password before logging into the network 105 in some embodiments. In other arrangements, however, each network 105 can be accessed over the World Wide Web. The global network 100 can include all associated users 102. Each user 102 of the global network 100 may belong to one or more individual networks 105, or may only belong to the global network 100 and not to any particular individual network 105. If a user 102 is a member of a particular individual network 105, the user 102 can log in to the network 105, create a task 104 in the network 105, and assign the task 104 to network users 102. Alternatively, a user 102 may create tasks 104 in the global network 100 and assign the task 104 to the user's contacts. A particular task 104 may be created in and may belong to a particular network 105. As explained herein, a network identifier, or network ID, can associate a task 104 with a particular network 105, or with the global network 100), (Id., ¶ 62, the task management system can include a task analytics module or system that enables users to spawn networks within their own companies or organizations and that enables organizations to analyze relationships associated with tasks performed by members of the organization. Indeed, because the task management system can monitor the e-mail and/or network IDs of the users that utilize the system, the task management system can sort the system users and task participants according to organizations and/or companies with which they are affiliated. As users of new organizations or companies are invited to participate in tasks with current users, the task management system can enable the newly added or invited users to create, or spawn, their own networks within their company or organization. For example, one embodiment is a people-relationship map that is generated to allow managers of a company to view the relationships of people in their organization with others (discloses organizational structure map). In this embodiment, the system tracks ongoing projects between different individuals within, and outside of, a company and can map those relationships. This allows the system to create graphs and maps of relationships that can be used to determine who is currently working with particular individuals, the scope of work being performed, and who is completing and performing their tasks in a timely manner (discloses presumed collaborators based on an organizational structure map)).
Further, Sabet discloses a list of actual collaborators of an employee (Sabet, ¶ 86, As another example, the system can receive information from enterprise systems such as enterprise CRM databases or corporate directories, or from the person's social network or social media accounts, or contextual information from the person's device such as GPS data, thereby increasing the contextual understanding of a person's interactions and increasing the accuracy of identifying the correct activity type. These sources of information also provide the system with data about the person that can be used to complete the person's profile for the purpose of connecting the person to different person cohorts for benchmarking purposes), (Id., ¶ 246, FIG. 22 (depicts generated list of collaborators) provides an embodiment of obtaining aggregated feedback using PAM. PAM makes performance management an everyday activity. Each employee will review aggregated feedback from everyone they interact with 2202, not just their manager, and not just people within their company. In one embodiment, the questions are contextualized by the type of interaction. In another embodiment, feedback from multiple sources in various contexts 2206 on the same standard question set enables personalized analytics. Dashboards 2204 are displayed with various metrics 2206 displayed enabling personalized analytics. Collection of data that is available for performance development resources for a cohort and processing recommended actions or goals of all people in a cohort to allocate available performance development resources based upon the processed recommended actions or goals is done using PAM. The resources are allocated in a manner to achieve the greatest impact on performance of a person or of the cohort based on performance data collected for persons identified having high performance indicators), (Id., ¶ 114, FIG. 6 illustrates the intelligent performance analytics 506 components. The back end intelligence 620 has modules directly interfacing the persons who are individuals, groups and company through modules individuals 602, group 604 and company 606 respectively. The backend intelligence contains the six main modules namely backend person/user interface 608, backend classification 610, backend communication 612, backend analysis platform 614, backend data analytics 616 and backend profile and collaboration 618. The back end intelligence is connected to a redundant knowledgebase 508. The performance metrics data generated from the processing of responses is combined with other performance metrics data generated for that person over time to generate a reputation profile for that person).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention
to have scanned the combined the list of presumed collaborators, as disclosed in Chen, with a list of actual collaborators as in the improvement discussed in Sabet in the system executing the method of Chen. As in Sabet, it is within the capabilities of one of ordinary skill in the art to utilize communications and corporate directory data to determine a list of collaborators to be compared with a list of presumptive collaborators as determined by communication and ongoing project data, with the predicted result of accurately identifying relationships and efficiencies of employees as needed in Chen.
Thus, through KSR Rationale C (See MPEP 2141(III)(C)), the combination of Chen and Sabet discloses …identify, based on data from a corporate directory server, an organizational structure comprising the employee and (i) a manager of the employee or (ii) a subordinate of the employee; generate a list of presumed collaborators with the employee based on the organizational structure; merge the list of actual collaborators and the list of presumed collaborators into a collaboration circle of the employee.
Sabet further discloses … generate, using information from a presentation server and based on the collected responses, a first dashboard…; allow the employee to access the first dashboard, which comprises (i) one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) one or more skill levels for the employee, and (iii) one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee (Sabet, ¶ 131, FIG. 13 shows the dashboard of the person (employee) so he can start entering data and set goals for My Improve .sup.R list. This graphical person interface is made to be simple and not intimidating. The different modules described in FIG. 2 provide support as a system and process using seamless architecture. FIG. 13 shows an embodiment of example inputs into the PAM application, and example outputs from the PAM application using data generated by an Analysis module 206. FIG. 13 also shows another example of an output using data generated by an Analysis Module 206. From the results of the Classification Module, the Analysis Module 206 can generate a feedback template for every classified calendar event and prompt the person to provide feedback through the template), (Id., ¶ 132, As an example, an Analysis Module 206 may receive data from an Input Module 202 that a person has just completed an interaction such as a meeting, phone call, or other event or activity. The Analysis Module 206 may then request from a Classification Module 204 the feedback type associated with the activity type for that interaction. Upon receiving the feedback type data, the Analysis Module 206 may require a Communication Module 214 to send an automated feedback request notification, based on that feedback type, to workforce participants who participated in the interaction soliciting feedback about the person. Feedback received will flow back to the Analysis Module 206 for various analyses as described below (discloses collecting feedback responses)), (Id., ¶ 133, Rating scores from feedback received from Input Modules 202 may be aggregated using robust statistics to assess both the “aptitude” for the attribute (discloses skill level) (for example determined by the median score), and the “consistency” of the attribute (discloses efficiency parameter) (for example determined by the interquartile range). From the results of the feedback, the system can generate various performance dashboards showing how the person performs according to all activities, or different kinds of activities, or according to different kinds of attributes), (Id., ¶ 135, The Analysis Module 206 may also use feedback results to create an explicit rating or reputation for that person. As an example, if the analysis of a particular person's feedback shows that a particular attribute X has a high consistency score as well as a high aptitude score, the system may translate these scores into an explicit rating that the system, or the person, can post to the person's profile. In this example, the system may have calculated a rating for a person of 7.5 out of a total of 10 for the attribute “inspiring presentations”. (discloses leadership trait indicators) This rating could be used in this form in the person's reputation rating, or it can be translated to other another form of rating such as 4 out of 5 stars, or a certain sized bubble representing the quantity of the rating).
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It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have modified the collaboration circle and communication document elements of Panigrahi to include the employee survey elements of Chen to include the dashboard and organization structure elements of Sabet in the analogous art of assessing performance metrics and use of the same for the same reasons as stated for claim 1.
Regarding claims 14-16, these claims recite limitations substantially similar to those in claims 7-9, respectively, and are rejected for the same reasons as stated above.
Regarding claim 17, Panigrahi discloses …A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising executable instructions that, when executed by a computer system, cause the computer system to: identify, based on data from an information extraction server, a plurality of communications involving an employee, wherein the plurality of communications comprises digital or telephonic communications (Panigrahi, ¶ 85, Particular embodiments may be implemented in a computer-readable storage medium for use by or in connection with the instruction execution system, apparatus, system, or device. Particular embodiments can be implemented in the form of control logic in software or hardware or a combination of both. The control logic, when executed by one or more processors, may be operable to perform that which is described in particular embodiments), (Id., ¶ 35, the social network 12 includes computer code for hosting various conversations 26-30 pertaining to different business objects and for hosting different social profiles 32 of enterprise personnel), (Id., ¶ 40, Information pertaining to associations between business objects, kudos, and conversations may be maintained via the social kudos controller 24, e.g., via a business object associations module 44, and/or via one or more other modules in the system 10. The example social kudos controller 34 further includes a social conversation collection and tracking module 46, a social kudos collection module 50, and a kudos statistics generator 48, which may intercommunicate. The social kudos collection module 50 may collect copies of kudos when they are issued via the social network 12 and other ERP software 14-18. Similarly, the social conversation collection and tracking module 46 may store text and other input pertaining to conversations occurring via the social network 12 and other ERP software 14-18), (Id., ¶ 54, FIG. 3 shows a second example user interface display screen 80 illustrating text of a second discussion 82 occurring via a social network (such as the social network 12 of FIG. 1) and further illustrating user interface controls 86 for providing discussion input and assigning kudos to input provided by discussion participants), (Id., ¶ 33, The example system 10 includes a social network 12, which may include various social networking websites, business social networks (also called enterprise social networks), and other software and systems adapted to enable conversations or collaboration between individuals. For the purposes of the present discussion, a conversation may be any communication exchange between two or more persons. A conversation may include text and/or other input, such as uploaded or shared presentations, documents, audio files, or other files (discloses digital communications)), (Id., ¶ 55, In the present example embodiment, a message representing conversation input is selected by a user, such as participant Jules Hendersen. A kudos user option, i.e., user interface control 88, may then be selected by Jules Hendersen to facilitate adding a kudos for Nicole Kelly based on or associated with the selected input 84 of Nicole Kelly. A note field 96 enables the kudos giver, e.g., Jules Hendersen, to add a note to be further associated with or included in the kudos. After a kudos note, e.g., text pertaining to positive feedback, has been entered, and the kudos control 88 is selected, the kudos is registered as being associated with Nicole Kelly's input 84 in the conversation 82, which is associated with a business object, e.g., Pinnacle Green Server ROI 98), (Id., Fig. 3, Figure depicts identifying a collaboration circle for a user based on communications);
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While suggested in at least Fig. 7 and related text, Panigrahi does not explicitly disclose … generate a list of actual collaborators with the employee based on (i) the plurality of communications and (ii) a natural language processing thereof to exclude from consideration one or more irrelevant communications of the plurality of communications, wherein the natural language processing of the plurality of communications comprises identifying specific semantic constructs within the plurality of communications; identify, based on data from a corporate directory server, an organizational structure comprising the employee and (i) a manager of the employee or (ii) a subordinate of the employee; generate a list of presumed collaborators with the employee based on the organizational structure; merge the list of actual collaborators and the list of presumed collaborators into a collaboration circle of the employee; generate, using information from a smart survey server, a questionnaire for determining experience and efficiency of the employee, wherein the questionnaire is based on previously collected responses pertaining to the experience and efficiency of the employee; present the questionnaire to the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle; collect responses to the questionnaire from the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle; generate, using information from a presentation server and based on the collected responses, a first dashboard and a second dashboard that each visually represent the experience and efficiency of the employee; allowing the employee to access the first dashboard, which comprises (i) one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) one or more skill levels for the employee, and (iii) one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee; and allow the manager of the employee to access the second dashboard, wherein the second dashboard comprises (i) the one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) the one or more skill levels for the employee, (iii) the one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee, (iv) an organizational parameter not included in the first dashboard, and (v) indicators of whether the employee is a low performing employee, whether the employee exhibits low job satisfaction, whether the employee exhibits high burnout characteristics, and whether the employee is likely to resign in an immediate future.
However, Chen discloses … generate, using information from a smart survey server, a questionnaire for determining experience and efficiency of the employee, wherein the questionnaire is based on previously collected responses pertaining to the experience and efficiency of the employee; present the questionnaire to the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle; collect responses to the questionnaire from the actual and presumed collaborators of the collaboration circle (Chen, ¶ 114, the user management module 359 can monitor the users or participants in the system to determine how effective the users are in meeting task deadlines and expectations. For example, the user management module 359 may monitor the number and/or percentage of tasks in which each user meets or beats the listed deadline, e.g., due date (discloses employee experience), for a task. The user management module 359 may also monitor the productivity of each user or task participant. For example, the user management module 359 can measure the efficiency of each user (discloses employee efficiency), e.g., how long it takes the user to complete a task. In further arrangements, the user management module 359 can measure the productivity of a user based on feedback given by other task participants. For example, if User 1 is viewed as being a team player or an exceptionally talented contributor by User 1's collaborators, (discloses feedback received by the collaborators of a user) then the user management module 359 may determine that User 1 is a valuable user. The user management module 359 can accordingly sort and organize users according to task efficiency and productivity, and can prioritize users (e.g., employees, vendors, customers, etc.), according to their efficiency, quality of work, and/or productivity), (Id., ¶ 123, A contact list field 367 can store the contact list associated with each user. As explained above, the contact list can include a list of all users with which the user has participated in a task. Further, an associated documents field 362 can list documents that are associated with the user and/or the tasks associated with the user. Similarly, a task history field 364 can store the subject matter and/or keywords associated with tasks on which the user has collaborated in the past. Other users or organizations can exploit the task history field 364 to leverage users' prior experiences with a particular task or project. For example, a search engine can be provided to search for keywords and/or subject matter of prior tasks and/or task participants. A user timeliness field 366 and a user efficiency field 368 can be provided to monitor whether or not a user timely meets expected due dates and how fast a user completes various tasks. The company or organization can thereby compare users' efficiencies and reliability when making decisions. A user productivity field 370 may also be included to measure how productive a user is at a series of tasks or projects. For example, user productivity may be measured based upon feedback and/or surveys completed by other task participants, or even by third parties. (discloses questionnaire) A miscellaneous, other information field 369 can store additional information or notes about each user. For example, if the owner and/or operator of the server has additional information or a history with a particular user, then the owner and/or operator of the server can input this information (discloses survey server) into the other information field 369);
…and a second dashboard that each visually represent the experience and efficiency of the employee; and allow the manager of the employee to access the second dashboard, wherein the second dashboard comprises (i) the one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) the one or more skill levels for the employee, (iii) the one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee, (iv) an organizational parameter not included in the first dashboard, and (v) indicators of whether the employee is a low performing employee, whether the employee exhibits low job satisfaction, whether the employee exhibits high burnout characteristics, and whether the employee is likely to resign in an immediate future (Id., ¶ 65, a task analytics dashboard, or user interface, can be presented to company- or organization-level executives or managers. (discloses dashboard for managers) The dashboard can include various pages that illustrate user productivity and user relationships, as well as project data and topic data. The dashboard can analyze task data that is aggregated by the task management system and can be presented to a decision-maker to assist in making decisions. For example, in some embodiments, the dashboard can help decision-makers with internal personnel or task assignment decisions. In addition, the dashboard can help decision-makers with high-level decisions regarding competitors, business partners, the future direction of a particular product line, etc), (Id., ¶ 160, as shown in the data box 1012 of FIG. 10B, a decision-maker can select user productivity/number of tasks, work quality (e.g., based off peer, client, or supervisor feedback, etc.) (discloses employee skill level), on-time task completion percentage (discloses indicators of low performance/burnout), user relationships (discloses leadership trait indicators) (e.g., based on the task participant relationship map 800), and any other suitable data set. In the company snapshot view 1008 of FIG. 10B, the task on-time percentage data set has been selected, and a graph is presented to the user or decision-maker that illustrates the percentage that each user (e.g., employee) of the company completes an assigned task on time. Skilled artisans will understand that other data sets are possible), (Id., ¶ 114, the user management module 359 can monitor the users or participants in the system to determine how effective the users are in meeting task deadlines and expectations. For example, the user management module 359 may monitor the number and/or percentage of tasks in which each user meets or beats the listed deadline, e.g., due date (discloses employee experience), for a task. The user management module 359 may also monitor the productivity of each user or task participant. For example, the user management module 359 can measure the efficiency of each user (discloses employee efficiency), e.g., how long it takes the user to complete a task. In further arrangements, the user management module 359 can measure the productivity of a user based on feedback given by other task participants),
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It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have modified the collaboration circle and communication document elements of Panigrahi to include the employee survey elements of Chen in the analogous art of providing feedback for task participants for the same reasons as stated for claim 1.
While suggested in at least Fig. 7 and related text of Panigrahi, the combination of Panigrahi and Chen does not explicitly disclose … generate a list of actual collaborators with the employee based on (i) the plurality of communications and (ii) a natural language processing thereof to exclude from consideration one or more irrelevant communications of the plurality of communications, wherein the natural language processing of the plurality of communications comprises identifying specific semantic constructs within the plurality of communications; identify, based on data from a corporate directory server, an organizational structure comprising the employee and (i) a manager of the employee or (ii) a subordinate of the employee; generate a list of presumed collaborators with the employee based on the organizational structure; merge the list of actual collaborators and the list of presumed collaborators into a collaboration circle of the employee; generate, using information from a presentation server and based on the collected responses, a first dashboard…; allow the employee to access the first dashboard, which comprises (i) one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) one or more skill levels for the employee, and (iii) one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee.
However, Sabet discloses … generate a list of actual collaborators with the employee based on (i) the plurality of communications and (ii) a natural language processing thereof to exclude from consideration one or more irrelevant communications of the plurality of communications, wherein the natural language processing of the plurality of communications comprises identifying specific semantic constructs within the plurality of communications (Sabet, ¶ 85, One of more Input Modules 202 may receive data through integrations with other systems or through manual inputs. The Input Module may automatically pull content and associated meta data from multiple sources, including but not limited to, a person's contacts, calendar, email, phone logs and other individual accounts. This data may be used by the system to analyze how, with whom and for what general purpose the person is spending his time), (Id., ¶ 86, As another example, the system can receive information from enterprise systems such as enterprise CRM databases or corporate directories, or from the person's social network or social media accounts, or contextual information from the person's device such as GPS data, thereby increasing the contextual understanding of a person's interactions and increasing the accuracy of identifying the correct activity type. These sources of information also provide the system with data about the person that can be used to complete the person's profile for the purpose of connecting the person to different person cohorts for benchmarking purposes), (Id., ¶ 246, FIG. 22 (depicts generated list of collaborators) provides an embodiment of obtaining aggregated feedback using PAM. PAM makes performance management an everyday activity. Each employee will review aggregated feedback from everyone they interact with 2202, not just their manager, and not just people within their company. In one embodiment, the questions are contextualized by the type of interaction. In another embodiment, feedback from multiple sources in various contexts 2206 on the same standard question set enables personalized analytics. Dashboards 2204 are displayed with various metrics 2206 displayed enabling personalized analytics. Collection of data that is available for performance development resources for a cohort and processing recommended actions or goals of all people in a cohort to allocate available performance development resources based upon the processed recommended actions or goals is done using PAM. The resources are allocated in a manner to achieve the greatest impact on performance of a person or of the cohort based on performance data collected for persons identified having high performance indicators), (Id., ¶ 92, the Classification Module 204 may calculate how much time the person spends in meetings versus working alone. Using various information processing techniques, such as natural language processing methods (discloses identifying semantic constructs using natural language processing), the system may assign a likelihood that each specific calendar activity falls into a more general activity type. Activity types might include, without limitation: travel time, 1-on-1 meetings, group meetings, presentations, training, social event, customer meeting, support call, individual working session or conference. From this analysis, the system can generate an activity map for the person showing the person how he spends his time among these different kinds of activity types), (Id., ¶ 199, By doing natural language processing on meeting invites looking for phrases such as “make a determination” or “resolve whether to” to identify cases where disagreement is likely, or “demonstrate approach” or “review solution” for cases where a problem may have been resolved independently), (Id., ¶ 135, The Analysis Module 206 may also use feedback results to create an explicit rating or reputation for that person. As an example, if the analysis of a particular person's feedback shows that a particular attribute X has a high consistency score as well as a high aptitude score, the system may translate these scores into an explicit rating that the system, or the person, can post to the person's profile. In this example, the system may have calculated a rating for a person of 7.5 out of a total of 10 for the attribute “inspiring presentations”. This rating could be used in this form in the person's reputation rating, or it can be translated to other another form of rating such as 4 out of 5 stars, or a certain sized bubble representing the quantity of the rating), (Id., ¶ 136, Such a reputation ranking system improves upon existing alternatives because it is based on data accumulated from people who have had real interactions with the PAM being ranked that are relevant to the attribute being ranked, reducing the possibility that the raking is manipulated or derived from irrelevant sources. (discloses identifying irrelevant communications) In addition, the anonymity of the feedback increases the likelihood of authenticity of the rankings).
Through KSR Rationale C (See MPEP 2141(III)(C)), the combination of Chen and Sabet discloses … identify, based on data from a corporate directory server, an organizational structure comprising the employee and (i) a manager of the employee or (ii) a subordinate of the employee; generate a list of presumed collaborators with the employee based on the organizational structure; merge the list of actual collaborators and the list of presumed collaborators into a collaboration circle of the employee.
First, Chen discloses …A corporate directory server as well as identifying potential collaborators based on an organizational structure (Chen, ¶ 83, Each network 105 can be, for example, a company intranet or support Website hosted on one or more servers. The users 102 can be members of the network 105, and can interact with the network 105 using a user interface (UI) through a device such as a computer, tablet, personal digital assistant (PDA) and/or mobile phone. Each user can be prompted for a password before logging into the network 105 in some embodiments. In other arrangements, however, each network 105 can be accessed over the World Wide Web. The global network 100 can include all associated users 102. Each user 102 of the global network 100 may belong to one or more individual networks 105, or may only belong to the global network 100 and not to any particular individual network 105. If a user 102 is a member of a particular individual network 105, the user 102 can log in to the network 105, create a task 104 in the network 105, and assign the task 104 to network users 102. Alternatively, a user 102 may create tasks 104 in the global network 100 and assign the task 104 to the user's contacts. A particular task 104 may be created in and may belong to a particular network 105. As explained herein, a network identifier, or network ID, can associate a task 104 with a particular network 105, or with the global network 100), (Id., ¶ 62, the task management system can include a task analytics module or system that enables users to spawn networks within their own companies or organizations and that enables organizations to analyze relationships associated with tasks performed by members of the organization. Indeed, because the task management system can monitor the e-mail and/or network IDs of the users that utilize the system, the task management system can sort the system users and task participants according to organizations and/or companies with which they are affiliated. As users of new organizations or companies are invited to participate in tasks with current users, the task management system can enable the newly added or invited users to create, or spawn, their own networks within their company or organization. For example, one embodiment is a people-relationship map that is generated to allow managers of a company to view the relationships of people in their organization with others (discloses organizational structure map). In this embodiment, the system tracks ongoing projects between different individuals within, and outside of, a company and can map those relationships. This allows the system to create graphs and maps of relationships that can be used to determine who is currently working with particular individuals, the scope of work being performed, and who is completing and performing their tasks in a timely manner (discloses presumed collaborators based on an organizational structure map)).
Further, Sabet discloses a list of actual collaborators of an employee (Sabet, ¶ 86, As another example, the system can receive information from enterprise systems such as enterprise CRM databases or corporate directories, or from the person's social network or social media accounts, or contextual information from the person's device such as GPS data, thereby increasing the contextual understanding of a person's interactions and increasing the accuracy of identifying the correct activity type. These sources of information also provide the system with data about the person that can be used to complete the person's profile for the purpose of connecting the person to different person cohorts for benchmarking purposes), (Id., ¶ 246, FIG. 22 (depicts generated list of collaborators) provides an embodiment of obtaining aggregated feedback using PAM. PAM makes performance management an everyday activity. Each employee will review aggregated feedback from everyone they interact with 2202, not just their manager, and not just people within their company. In one embodiment, the questions are contextualized by the type of interaction. In another embodiment, feedback from multiple sources in various contexts 2206 on the same standard question set enables personalized analytics. Dashboards 2204 are displayed with various metrics 2206 displayed enabling personalized analytics. Collection of data that is available for performance development resources for a cohort and processing recommended actions or goals of all people in a cohort to allocate available performance development resources based upon the processed recommended actions or goals is done using PAM. The resources are allocated in a manner to achieve the greatest impact on performance of a person or of the cohort based on performance data collected for persons identified having high performance indicators), (Id., ¶ 114, FIG. 6 illustrates the intelligent performance analytics 506 components. The back end intelligence 620 has modules directly interfacing the persons who are individuals, groups and company through modules individuals 602, group 604 and company 606 respectively. The backend intelligence contains the six main modules namely backend person/user interface 608, backend classification 610, backend communication 612, backend analysis platform 614, backend data analytics 616 and backend profile and collaboration 618. The back end intelligence is connected to a redundant knowledgebase 508. The performance metrics data generated from the processing of responses is combined with other performance metrics data generated for that person over time to generate a reputation profile for that person).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention
to have scanned the combined the list of presumed collaborators, as disclosed in Chen, with a list of actual collaborators as in the improvement discussed in Sabet in the system executing the method of Chen. As in Sabet, it is within the capabilities of one of ordinary skill in the art to utilize communications and corporate directory data to determine a list of collaborators to be compared with a list of presumptive collaborators as determined by communication and ongoing project data, with the predicted result of accurately identifying relationships and efficiencies of employees as needed in Chen.
Thus, through KSR Rationale C (See MPEP 2141(III)(C)), the combination of Chen and Sabet discloses …identify, based on data from a corporate directory server, an organizational structure comprising the employee and (i) a manager of the employee or (ii) a subordinate of the employee; generate a list of presumed collaborators with the employee based on the organizational structure; merge the list of actual collaborators and the list of presumed collaborators into a collaboration circle of the employee.
Sabet further discloses … generate, using information from a presentation server and based on the collected responses, a first dashboard…; allow the employee to access the first dashboard, which comprises (i) one or more experience or efficiency parameters for the employee, (ii) one or more skill levels for the employee, and (iii) one or more leadership trait indicators for the employee (Sabet, ¶ 131, FIG. 13 shows the dashboard of the person (employee) so he can start entering data and set goals for My Improve .sup.R list. This graphical person interface is made to be simple and not intimidating. The different modules described in FIG. 2 provide support as a system and process using seamless architecture. FIG. 13 shows an embodiment of example inputs into the PAM application, and example outputs from the PAM application using data generated by an Analysis module 206. FIG. 13 also shows another example of an output using data generated by an Analysis Module 206. From the results of the Classification Module, the Analysis Module 206 can generate a feedback template for every classified calendar event and prompt the person to provide feedback through the template), (Id., ¶ 132, As an example, an Analysis Module 206 may receive data from an Input Module 202 that a person has just completed an interaction such as a meeting, phone call, or other event or activity. The Analysis Module 206 may then request from a Classification Module 204 the feedback type associated with the activity type for that interaction. Upon receiving the feedback type data, the Analysis Module 206 may require a Communication Module 214 to send an automated feedback request notification, based on that feedback type, to workforce participants who participated in the interaction soliciting feedback about the person. Feedback received will flow back to the Analysis Module 206 for various analyses as described below (discloses collecting feedback responses)), (Id., ¶ 133, Rating scores from feedback received from Input Modules 202 may be aggregated using robust statistics to assess both the “aptitude” for the attribute (discloses skill level) (for example determined by the median score), and the “consistency” of the attribute (discloses efficiency parameter) (for example determined by the interquartile range). From the results of the feedback, the system can generate various performance dashboards showing how the person performs according to all activities, or different kinds of activities, or according to different kinds of attributes), (Id., ¶ 135, The Analysis Module 206 may also use feedback results to create an explicit rating or reputation for that person. As an example, if the analysis of a particular person's feedback shows that a particular attribute X has a high consistency score as well as a high aptitude score, the system may translate these scores into an explicit rating that the system, or the person, can post to the person's profile. In this example, the system may have calculated a rating for a person of 7.5 out of a total of 10 for the attribute “inspiring presentations”. (discloses leadership trait indicators) This rating could be used in this form in the person's reputation rating, or it can be translated to other another form of rating such as 4 out of 5 stars, or a certain sized bubble representing the quantity of the rating).
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It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have modified the collaboration circle and communication document elements of Panigrahi to include the employee survey elements of Chen to include the dashboard and organization structure elements of Sabet in the analogous art of assessing performance metrics and use of the same for the same reasons as stated for claim 1.
Regarding claim 21, the combination of Panigrahi, Chen and Sabet discloses …The computer-implemented method of claim 1…
Panigrahi further discloses …wherein the plurality of communications comprise a structured electronic mail message, a structured instant message, and a structured voicemail transcription (Panigrahi, ¶ 44,An optional email client (e.g., Microsoft Outlook.RTM.) plugin 22 may communicate with the social kudos controller 24. In the present example embodiment, the email client plugin 22 includes computer code for enabling a user to select text from an email message for inclusion in a new kudos or preexisting kudos and to allocate a kudos to a recipient or sender of an email message associated with the text), (Id., ¶ 81, Note that method 190 may be modified, without departing from the scope of the present teachings. For example various steps may be added to, removed from, or substituted into the method 190. An example additional step includes employing a social network to provide the first set of user interface controls. The electronic communications include messages exchanged over a social network used to conduct the discussion. Another example step includes enabling a system administrator to enable or disable kudos functionality in an ERP system).
Regarding claim 22, the combination of Panigrahi, Chen and Sabet discloses …The computer-implemented method of claim 1…
While suggested in at least Fig. 7 and related text, Panigrahi does not explicitly disclose …wherein the specific semantic constructs comprise (i) a task being formulated by the employee or the manager of the employee or (ii) a status being reported by the employee or a subordinate of the employee.
However, Chen discloses …wherein the specific semantic constructs comprise (i) a task being formulated by the employee or the manager of the employee or (ii) a status being reported by the employee or a subordinate of the employee (Chen, ¶ 24, In another embodiment, system having one or more processors and configured for managing tasks is disclosed. The system can comprise a task management module configured to run on the one or more processors and programmed to identify a new task to be shared by a plurality of users. The task management module can also be programmed to invite one or more users to share the new task. Further, the task management module can be programmed to receive an acceptance of the new task from the one or more users. The task management module can be programmed to associate the one or more users that accepted the new task with private task information. In addition, the task management module can be programmed to assign a status to the new task based on the stage of completion of the new task by the one or more associated users. The system can further include a multi-layered network management module configured to run on the one or more processors and programmed to organize the new task and a plurality of other tasks into a network of tasks based at least in part on a network identifier associated with the new task), (Id., ¶ 69, As with documents and messages, the tasks stored on the server(s) and presented in the inbox-outbox interface may be updated by the authorized users (e.g., task participants). Authorized users may be notified when the objects are updated. For example, when one user has begun a task, the user may update the task status to “pending.” Similarly, when a user completes a task, the user can update the task status to “completed.” These updated task statuses may be presented to other authorized users on their respective inbox-outbox interfaces. Furthermore, the inbox-outbox interface can indicate the date and/or time that various actions have been taken and by whom. The inbox-outbox interface can therefore act as a common interface that holds all authorized users or task participants accountable for their assigned responsibilities and ensures that the task timelines are followed. Thus, the inbox-outbox interface may also serve as a persistent interface for storing and editing tasks, in addition to documents and messages. Moreover, the inbox-outbox provides a centralized real-time platform for knowing the status of all ongoing tasks by the authorized users).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have modified the collaboration circle and communication document elements of Panigrahi to include the task formulation elements of Chen in the analogous art of providing feedback for task participants for the same reasons as stated for claim 1.
Regarding claim 23, the combination of Panigrahi, Chen and Sabet discloses …The computer-implemented method of claim 1…
Panigrahi further discloses … further comprising: identifying addressor and addressee fields in a communication of the plurality of communications (Panigrahi, ¶ 44, An optional email client (e.g., Microsoft Outlook.RTM.) plugin 22 may communicate with the social kudos controller 24. In the present example embodiment, the email client plugin 22 includes computer code for enabling a user to select text from an email message for inclusion in a new kudos or preexisting kudos and to allocate a kudos to a recipient or sender of an email message associated with the text).
While suggested in at least Fig. 7 and related text, Panigrahi does not explicitly disclose … and extracting a plurality of named entities from the communication based on the addressor and addressee fields; wherein generating the list of actual collaborators is further based on the plurality of named entities.
However, Chen discloses … and extracting a plurality of named entities from the communication based on the addressor and addressee fields; wherein generating the list of actual collaborators is further based on the plurality of named entities (Chen, ¶ 53, For example, a user Bob may wish to schedule a task to be completed by Alice and Mary. Using embodiments of the invention, Bob would send an e-mail message with a specific subject line to Alice and Mary asking them to perform the task. In the email message, Bob would copy a specific email address of a task management system. The task management system would receive the email from Bob and first identify that Alice and Mary are all part of the same task group as Bob, based on header information in the email message, such as user e-mail addresses. In addition, the task management system would review the subject line and parse the text of the email message to determine the subject, or type of task to be created. In an alternate embodiment, the system may look for keywords or a specific formatting of text or fields within the e-mail message to determine the type of task, name of task, and due date for completion), ¶ 83, Each network 105 can be, for example, a company intranet or support Website hosted on one or more servers. The users 102 can be members of the network 105, and can interact with the network 105 using a user interface (UI) through a device such as a computer, tablet, personal digital assistant (PDA) and/or mobile phone. Each user can be prompted for a password before logging into the network 105 in some embodiments. In other arrangements, however, each network 105 can be accessed over the World Wide Web. The global network 100 can include all associated users 102. Each user 102 of the global network 100 may belong to one or more individual networks 105, or may only belong to the global network 100 and not to any particular individual network 105. If a user 102 is a member of a particular individual network 105, the user 102 can log in to the network 105, create a task 104 in the network 105, and assign the task 104 to network users 102. Alternatively, a user 102 may create tasks 104 in the global network 100 and assign the task 104 to the user's contacts. A particular task 104 may be created in and may belong to a particular network 105. As explained herein, a network identifier, or network ID, can associate a task 104 with a particular network 105, or with the global network 100), (Id., ¶ 62, the task management system can include a task analytics module or system that enables users to spawn networks within their own companies or organizations and that enables organizations to analyze relationships associated with tasks performed by members of the organization. Indeed, because the task management system can monitor the e-mail and/or network IDs of the users that utilize the system, the task management system can sort the system users and task participants according to organizations and/or companies with which they are affiliated. As users of new organizations or companies are invited to participate in tasks with current users, the task management system can enable the newly added or invited users to create, or spawn, their own networks within their company or organization. For example, one embodiment is a people-relationship map that is generated to allow managers of a company to view the relationships of people in their organization with others (discloses organizational structure map). In this embodiment, the system tracks ongoing projects between different individuals within, and outside of, a company and can map those relationships. This allows the system to create graphs and maps of relationships (discloses list of collaborators) that can be used to determine who is currently working with particular individuals, the scope of work being performed, and who is completing and performing their tasks in a timely manner).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have modified the collaboration circle and communication document elements of Panigrahi to include the collaborator identification elements of Chen in the analogous art of providing feedback for task participants for the same reasons as stated for claim 1.
Regarding claim 24, the combination of Panigrahi, Chen and Sabet discloses …The computer-implemented method of claim 23…
While suggested in at least Fig. 7 and related text, Panigrahi does not explicitly disclose …further comprising: extracting from the communication a timestamp, a priority indicator, and other metadata; wherein generating the list of actual collaborators is further based on the timestamp, the priority indicator, and the other metadata.
However, Chen discloses …further comprising: extracting from the communication a timestamp, a priority indicator, and other metadata; wherein generating the list of actual collaborators is further based on the timestamp, the priority indicator, and the other metadata (Chen, ¶ 153, a company can monitor which other companies or organizations it frequently interacts with, e.g., which companies its employees collaborate with frequently on tasks. For example, the task analytics module 374 may determine that Company B has strong interactions with Company A and Company B based on User 5's frequent task collaborations with User 2 of Company A and User 8 of Company C. The task analytics module 374 may therefore inform a system administrator that Company B has ties with Companies A and B that the system administrator may not have previously realized. The task analytics module 374 may also sort the task participant relationships based on how active the relationships are. For example, if two users have recently participated in tasks together, the task analytics module 374 may assign a high score to the relationship, whereas, if two users participated in tasks long ago, (discloses other metadata) the task analytics module 374 may assign a lower score to the relationship. In addition, the task analytics module 374 can analyze the frequency that users interact with one another on various tasks. In some embodiments, the task analytics module 374 can assign higher values or priorities to relationships that involve frequent interactions, and lower values or priorities on relationships that involve less frequent or one-time-only transactions (discloses priority indicator)), (Id., ¶ 189, The method then moves to a block 1307 to indicate the assigned status on the graphical user interface to each of the authorized users associated with the computer object. In various arrangements, the integrated interface module 348 can include instructions to indicate the status of each object in real-time to authorized users. As explained herein with respect to FIG. 12, for example, the inbox-outbox interface 1200 can include an entry that shows whether a computer object is assigned, pending, completed, etc. Further, the inbox-outbox interface 1200 can indicate which user took a particular action at a particular date and/or time. (discloses timestamp data) By indicating the status of the computer objects on the graphical user interface, users may be held accountable for their assigned duties and timelines), (Id., ¶ 62, the task management system can include a task analytics module or system that enables users to spawn networks within their own companies or organizations and that enables organizations to analyze relationships associated with tasks performed by members of the organization. Indeed, because the task management system can monitor the e-mail and/or network IDs of the users that utilize the system, the task management system can sort the system users and task participants according to organizations and/or companies with which they are affiliated. As users of new organizations or companies are invited to participate in tasks with current users, the task management system can enable the newly added or invited users to create, or spawn, their own networks within their company or organization. For example, one embodiment is a people-relationship map that is generated to allow managers of a company to view the relationships of people in their organization with others (discloses organizational structure map). In this embodiment, the system tracks ongoing projects between different individuals within, and outside of, a company and can map those relationships. This allows the system to create graphs and maps of relationships (discloses list of collaborators) that can be used to determine who is currently working with particular individuals, the scope of work being performed, and who is completing and performing their tasks in a timely manner).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have modified the collaboration circle and communication document elements of Panigrahi to include the collaborator identification elements of Chen in the analogous art of providing feedback for task participants for the same reasons as stated for claim 1.
Claims 4-5, 12-13 and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Panigrahi in view of Chen and Sabet, and in further view of Lang et al., U.S. Publication No. 2012/0310711 [hereinafter Lang].
Regarding claim 4, the combination of Panigrahi, Chen and Sabet discloses …The computer-implemented method of claim 1…
While suggested in at least Fig. 7 and related text, Panigrahi does not explicitly disclose … wherein generating the questionnaire further comprises: identifying a category which received a lowest aggregated response value in a previous survey; identifying, for the identified category, a predefined number of sub-categories which received lowest, among all sub-categories, numbers of answered questions in the previous survey; generating, for identified sub-category, a predefined number of survey questions.
However, Chen discloses …wherein generating the set of questions further comprises: identifying a category which received a lowest aggregated response value in a previous survey (Chen, ¶ 161, Furthermore, the user analytics page 1002 can include a user snapshot view 1010. The user snapshot view 1010 can include a user list box 1014 that lists every user or employee within the company or organization. Alternatively, a search box can be provided to allow the decision-maker to search for a particular employee or user. When a particular user is selected, such as User 3 in the example of FIG. 10B, various graphs, charts, or tables may be presented to the decision-maker. For example, as shown in the user snapshot view 1010, the task on-time percentage, user productivity (e.g., by number of tasks), and feedback score/work quality (discloses determining response value scores based on survey feedback) are presented for User 3. Thus, a decision-maker can utilize the user analytics page 1002 to analyze data concerning each user, or employee, of the company or organization. It should be appreciated that the user analytics page 1002 may include more or fewer windows or boxes than shown in FIG. 10B).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have modified the collaboration circle and communication document elements of Panigrahi to include the employee survey elements of Chen in the analogous art of providing feedback for task participants for the same reasons as stated for claim 1.
While suggested in at least Fig. 7 and related text of Panigrahi, the combination of Panigrahi and Chen, Sabet does not explicitly disclose …identifying, for the identified category, a predefined number of sub-categories which received lowest, among all sub-categories, numbers of answered questions in the previous survey; and generating, for the predefined number of identified sub-categories, a predefined number of survey questions.
However, through KSR Rationale D (See MPEP 2141(III)(D), the combination of Chen and Lang discloses …identifying, for the identified category, a predefined number of sub-categories which received lowest, among all sub-categories, numbers of answered questions in the previous survey; and generating, for the predefined number of identified sub-categories, a predefined number of survey questions.
First, Chen discloses employee feedback survey scoring and generation (Chen, ¶ 114, the user management module 359 can monitor the users or participants in the system to determine how effective the users are in meeting task deadlines and expectations. For example, the user management module 359 may monitor the number and/or percentage of tasks in which each user meets or beats the listed deadline, e.g., due date (discloses employee experience), for a task. The user management module 359 may also monitor the productivity of each user or task participant. For example, the user management module 359 can measure the efficiency of each user (discloses employee efficiency), e.g., how long it takes the user to complete a task. In further arrangements, the user management module 359 can measure the productivity of a user based on feedback given by other task participants. For example, if User 1 is viewed as being a team player or an exceptionally talented contributor by User 1's collaborators, (discloses feedback received by the collaborators of a user) then the user management module 359 may determine that User 1 is a valuable user. The user management module 359 can accordingly sort and organize users according to task efficiency and productivity, and can prioritize users (e.g., employees, vendors, customers, etc.), according to their efficiency, quality of work, and/or productivity), (Id., ¶ 161, Furthermore, the user analytics page 1002 can include a user snapshot view 1010. The user snapshot view 1010 can include a user list box 1014 that lists every user or employee within the company or organization. Alternatively, a search box can be provided to allow the decision-maker to search for a particular employee or user. When a particular user is selected, such as User 3 in the example of FIG. 10B, various graphs, charts, or tables may be presented to the decision-maker. For example, as shown in the user snapshot view 1010, the task on-time percentage, user productivity (e.g., by number of tasks), and feedback score/work quality (discloses determining scores based on survey feedback) are presented for User 3. Thus, a decision-maker can utilize the user analytics page 1002 to analyze data concerning each user, or employee, of the company or organization. It should be appreciated that the user analytics page 1002 may include more or fewer windows or boxes than shown in FIG. 10B).
Further, Lang discloses feedback subcategories for employee review questionnaire surveys (Lang, ¶ 11, Another user option enables user selection of a portion of the one or more instances of feedback, after which user interface controls of the dialog box or window may be employed to associate the selected portion with a predetermined information category or sub-category), (Id., ¶ 12, Note that a sub-category is considered to be a type of information category. Examples of information categories include employee competency, employee goals, and so on. Information categories may further include sub-categories. For example, the competency category may include teamwork, leadership, problem solving, presentation skills, communication, decision making, and so on (discloses categories and sub-categories of employee feedback)), (Id., ¶ 46, The feedback section 70 is part of a questionnaire provided via questionnaire section 64. The questionnaire section 64 is accessible via tabs 58, which include a competencies tab 60, a goals tab 62, and a summary tab 68. The various tabs 58 correspond to sections of the user interface display screen 50 pertaining to a performance evaluation document for evaluating the performance of an enterprise employee, who in this example scenario, is Pat Miller. Identification information 56 pertaining to Pat Miller is displayed above the tabs 58).
One of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that applying the known technique of Lang would have yielded predictable results and resulted in an improved system. It would have been recognized that applying the employee feedback subcategory breakdown of Lang to the teachings of survey generation elements of Chen would have yielded predictable results because the level of ordinary skill in the art demonstrated by the references applied shows the ability to incorporate such employee feedback techniques into similar systems. Further, generating survey questions based on feedback from particular performance sub-categories would have been recognized by those of ordinary skill in the art as resulting in an improved system that would allow more detailed employee feedback reports according to specific sub-categories.
Thus, through KSR Rationale D (See MPEP 2141(III)(D), the combination of Chen and Lang discloses …identifying, for the identified category, a predefined number of sub-categories which received lowest, among all sub-categories, numbers of answered questions in the previous survey; and generating, for the predefined number of identified sub-categories, a predefined number of survey questions.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have modified the collaboration circle and communication document elements of Panigrahi, the employee survey elements of Chen and the organizational structure elements of Sabet to include the employee feedback subcategory elements of Lang in the analogous art of feedback comments linked to performance document content.
The motivation for doing so would have been to “enable increased manager productivity” by “expediting and improving the employee evaluation process conducted by a manager” (Lang, ¶ 16), wherein such improvements would benefit Sabet’s method which seeks to provide an improved “system and method for assessing a performance metrics...”, wherein, “…performance metrics are generated and processed using interaction and relationship profiles, feedback inputs, and career trajectory over time by combining aggregate data for a person and across many persons. More specifically performance analytics metric (PAM) identifies the typical career trajectory and the competencies, skills, and timelines adherent to obtaining career objectives for a person” (Sabet, ¶ 2), wherein such improvements would further benefit Chen’s method which seeks to improve the ability to “sort and organize users according to task efficiency and productivity, and can prioritize users (e.g., employees, vendors, customers, etc.), according to their efficiency, quality of work, and/or productivity.” (Chen, ¶ 114), and wherein such improvements would further benefit Panigrahi’s method which enables the ability to “incrementally benefit from timely feedback and need not wait for the completion of a review process to act upon important feedback, which could improve worker performance and overall enterprise productivity” [Lang, ¶ 16; Sabet, ¶ 2;Chen, ¶ 114; Panigrahi, ¶ 16].
Regarding claim 5, the combination of Panigrahi, Chen and Sabet discloses …The computer-implemented method of claim 1…
While suggested in at least Fig. 7 and related text, Panigrahi does not explicitly disclose … wherein generating the set of questions further comprises: identifying a category which received a lowest aggregated response value in a previous survey; identifying, for each identified category, a predefined number of employees which received lowest aggregated response values in the category; generating, for each of one or more sub-categories in the identified category, a predefined number of survey questions.
However, Chen discloses … wherein generating the set of questions further comprises: identifying a predefined number of survey categories which received lowest aggregated response values in a previous survey (Chen, ¶ 161, Furthermore, the user analytics page 1002 can include a user snapshot view 1010. The user snapshot view 1010 can include a user list box 1014 that lists every user or employee within the company or organization. Alternatively, a search box can be provided to allow the decision-maker to search for a particular employee or user. When a particular user is selected, such as User 3 in the example of FIG. 10B, various graphs, charts, or tables may be presented to the decision-maker. For example, as shown in the user snapshot view 1010, the task on-time percentage, user productivity (e.g., by number of tasks), and feedback score/work quality (discloses determining scores based on survey feedback) are presented for User 3. Thus, a decision-maker can utilize the user analytics page 1002 to analyze data concerning each user, or employee, of the company or organization. It should be appreciated that the user analytics page 1002 may include more or fewer windows or boxes than shown in FIG. 10B);
identifying, for each identified category, a predefined number of employees which received lowest aggregated response values in the category (Id., ¶ 160, as shown in the data box 1012 of FIG. 10B, a decision-maker can select user productivity/number of tasks, work quality (e.g., based off peer, client, or supervisor feedback, etc.), on-time task completion percentage, user relationships (e.g., based on the task participant relationship map 800), and any other suitable data set. In the company snapshot view 1008 of FIG. 10B, the task on-time percentage data set has been selected, and a graph is presented to the user or decision-maker that illustrates the percentage that each user (e.g., employee) of the company completes an assigned task on time. Skilled artisans will understand that other data sets are possible), (Id., Fig. 10B depicts feedback response values for each employee).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have modified the collaboration circle and communication document elements of Panigrahi to include the employee survey elements of Chen in the analogous art of providing feedback for task participants for the same reasons as stated for claim 1.
While suggested in at least Fig. 7 and related text of Panigrahi, the combination of Panigrahi and Chen does not explicitly disclose …identifying, for the identified category, a predefined number of sub-categories which received lowest, among all sub-categories, numbers of answered questions in the previous survey; generating, for identified sub-category, a predefined number of survey questions.
However, through KSR Rationale D (See MPEP 2141(III)(D), the combination of Chen and Lang discloses …generating, for identified sub-category, a predefined number of survey questions.
First, Chen discloses employee feedback survey scoring and generation (Chen, ¶ 114, the user management module 359 can monitor the users or participants in the system to determine how effective the users are in meeting task deadlines and expectations. For example, the user management module 359 may monitor the number and/or percentage of tasks in which each user meets or beats the listed deadline, e.g., due date (discloses employee experience), for a task. The user management module 359 may also monitor the productivity of each user or task participant. For example, the user management module 359 can measure the efficiency of each user (discloses employee efficiency), e.g., how long it takes the user to complete a task. In further arrangements, the user management module 359 can measure the productivity of a user based on feedback given by other task participants. For example, if User 1 is viewed as being a team player or an exceptionally talented contributor by User 1's collaborators, (discloses feedback received by the collaborators of a user) then the user management module 359 may determine that User 1 is a valuable user. The user management module 359 can accordingly sort and organize users according to task efficiency and productivity, and can prioritize users (e.g., employees, vendors, customers, etc.), according to their efficiency, quality of work, and/or productivity), (Id., ¶ 161, Furthermore, the user analytics page 1002 can include a user snapshot view 1010. The user snapshot view 1010 can include a user list box 1014 that lists every user or employee within the company or organization. Alternatively, a search box can be provided to allow the decision-maker to search for a particular employee or user. When a particular user is selected, such as User 3 in the example of FIG. 10B, various graphs, charts, or tables may be presented to the decision-maker. For example, as shown in the user snapshot view 1010, the task on-time percentage, user productivity (e.g., by number of tasks), and feedback score/work quality (discloses determining scores based on survey feedback) are presented for User 3. Thus, a decision-maker can utilize the user analytics page 1002 to analyze data concerning each user, or employee, of the company or organization. It should be appreciated that the user analytics page 1002 may include more or fewer windows or boxes than shown in FIG. 10B).
Further, Lang discloses feedback subcategories for employee review questionnaire surveys (Lang, ¶ 11, Another user option enables user selection of a portion of the one or more instances of feedback, after which user interface controls of the dialog box or window may be employed to associate the selected portion with a predetermined information category or sub-category), (Id., ¶ 12, Note that a sub-category is considered to be a type of information category. Examples of information categories include employee competency, employee goals, and so on. Information categories may further include sub-categories. For example, the competency category may include teamwork, leadership, problem solving, presentation skills, communication, decision making, and so on (discloses categories and sub-categories of employee feedback)), (Id., ¶ 46, The feedback section 70 is part of a questionnaire provided via questionnaire section 64. The questionnaire section 64 is accessible via tabs 58, which include a competencies tab 60, a goals tab 62, and a summary tab 68. The various tabs 58 correspond to sections of the user interface display screen 50 pertaining to a performance evaluation document for evaluating the performance of an enterprise employee, who in this example scenario, is Pat Miller. Identification information 56 pertaining to Pat Miller is displayed above the tabs 58).
One of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that applying the known technique of Lang would have yielded predictable results and resulted in an improved system. It would have been recognized that applying the employee feedback subcategory breakdown of Lang to the teachings of survey generation elements of Chen would have yielded predictable results because the level of ordinary skill in the art demonstrated by the references applied shows the ability to incorporate such employee feedback techniques into similar systems. Further, generating survey questions based on feedback from particular performance sub-categories would have been recognized by those of ordinary skill in the art as resulting in an improved system that would allow more detailed employee feedback reports according to specific sub-categories.
Thus, through KSR Rationale D (See MPEP 2141(III)(D), the combination of Chen and Lang discloses …generating, for each of one or more sub-categories in the identified category, a predefined number of survey questions.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have modified the collaboration circle and communication document elements of Panigrahi and the employee survey elements of Chen and the organizational structure elements of Sabet to include the employee feedback subcategory elements of Lang in the analogous art of feedback comments linked to performance document content for the same reasons as stated for claim 4.
Regarding claims 12-13, these claims recite limitations substantially similar to those in claims 4-5, respectively, and are rejected for the same reasons as stated above.
Regarding claims 19-20, these claims recite limitations substantially similar to those in claims 4-5, respectively, and are rejected for the same reasons as stated above.
Claim 25 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Panigrahi in view of Chen and Sabet, and in further view of Rajaganesan et al., U.S. Publication No. 2016/0063408 [hereinafter Rajaganesan].
Regarding claim 25, the combination of Panigrahi, Chen and Sabet discloses …The computer-implemented method of claim 1…
While suggested in at least Fig. 7 and related text of Panigrahi, the combination of Panigrahi and Chen, Sabet does not explicitly disclose …wherein generating the questionnaire for determining experience and efficiency of the employee comprises: providing the previously collected responses pertaining to the experience and efficiency of the employee to an advanced language generative model trained to generate one or more questions for the questionnaire; and after providing the previously collected responses to the advanced language generative model, receive the one or more questions from the advanced language generative model, wherein the questionnaire comprises the one or more questions.
However, Rajaganesan discloses …wherein generating the questionnaire for determining experience and efficiency of the employee comprises: providing the previously collected responses pertaining to the experience and efficiency of the employee to an advanced language generative model trained to generate one or more questions for the questionnaire (Rajaganesan, ¶ 22, The survey manager 101 may be connected to at least one database. The survey manager 101 may be connected to the database 104, 105 using a suitable connection means such as internet, a Local Area Network (LAN), a Wide Area Network (WAN), a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and so on. The database may be a survey database 104, wherein the survey database 104 may comprise of statements which have to be taken by the employees and so on. The statements may comprise of self-appraisal statements (comprising of queries pertaining to self-strengths, development areas and passion areas of the employees), employee statements (comprising of queries related to feedback about reporting manager, other employees and so on) and work environment statements (comprising of queries related to the work environment, human resource policies, culture of the organization and so on). The survey database 104 may comprise of at least one trigger associated with each statement. In an embodiment herein, the survey database 104 may comprise of at least one database, wherein the statements may be distributed over more than one database. In an embodiment, the survey database 104 may be on the cloud. The database may be an employee database 205. The employee database 205 may comprise of information related to employees of the organization, wherein the information may comprise of surveys taken by the employees, the responses to the statements, the dates at which the surveys were taken, (discloses previous survey responses) other employees who may access the surveys and associated results of the employee and the extent to which the other employees may view the surveys and associated results, milestones associated with the employee and so on. In an embodiment herein, the employee database 105 may comprise of at least one database, wherein the employee information may be distributed over more than one database. In an embodiment, the employee database 105 may be on the cloud or on a server belonging to the organization), (Id., ¶ 25, The controller 201, on receiving the indication from the trigger module 202, fetches the statement(s) from the survey database 104 (as depicted in FIG. 3). The controller 201 may check if an employee has been previously completed the survey within a pre-defined time limit, before sending the survey to the employee. The controller 201 sends the fetched statements to the aggregator 203 (as depicted in FIG. 3). The aggregator 203 checks the statement(s) for any similar questions. The aggregator 203 may use semantics based analysis (discloses language generative model for generating groups of survey questions) for checking for similar questions. The aggregator 203 may use prior experimental data and/or indications received from the administrator 103 to determine the similar questions. The aggregator 203 may use identify and group questions with a similar underlying construct using responses from experimental/pilot surveys using semantics based analysis methods. () Once grouped, the aggregator 203 selects the questions with the highest correlation coefficient to represent the group. Subsequently, the aggregator 203 maps the other questions back to the chosen questions (which become the final user end question). The aggregator 203 may further store the information related to the similar questions and the removed questions in a suitable location such as the survey database 104, another database accessible to the survey manager 101, a memory internal to the survey manager 101, a memory external to the survey manager 101 and accessible to the survey manager 101. The aggregator 203 may further present the survey to the employee 102 through the interface 204 (as depicted in FIG. 3));
and after providing the previously collected responses to the advanced language generative model, receive the one or more questions from the advanced language generative model, wherein the questionnaire comprises the one or more questions (Id., ¶ 25, Once grouped, the aggregator 203 selects the questions with the highest correlation coefficient to represent the group. Subsequently, the aggregator 203 maps the other questions back to the chosen questions (which become the final user end question). The aggregator 203 may further store the information related to the similar questions and the removed questions in a suitable location such as the survey database 104, another database accessible to the survey manager 101, a memory internal to the survey manager 101, a memory external to the survey manager 101 and accessible to the survey manager 101. The aggregator 203 may further present the survey to the employee 102 through the interface 204 (as depicted in FIG. 3)), (Id., ¶ 43, FIGS. 4a and 4b are flowcharts illustrating the process of performing survey in an organization, according to embodiments as disclosed herein. On detecting (401) a trigger for at least one survey being triggered, the survey manager 101 fetches (402) the survey(s) from the survey database 104. The survey manager 101 checks (403) the survey(s) for any similar questions. The aggregator 203 may use semantics based analysis for checking for similar questions. The aggregator 203 may use prior experimental data and/or indications received from the administrator 103 to determine the similar questions. If the survey manager 101 finds at least one set of similar questions, the survey manager 101 removes (404) all but one of the similar questions from the survey(s). The survey manager 101 further stores (405) the information related to the similar questions and the removed questions in a suitable location. The survey manager 101 further presents (406) the survey to the employee 102. On receiving (407) the completed survey from the employee, the survey manager 101 checks (408) for any similar questions which were present initially in the survey (s), but were removed previously. The mapping module 205 may use the information stored previously. If the survey manager 101 discovers at least one similar question, the survey manager 101 maps (409) the response of the employee to the question to the other similar questions present in the survey(s). The survey manager 101 stores (410) the completed survey(s) in a suitable location. The controller 201 further performs (411) further analysis on the completed survey(s) to generate reports and associated planning and tracking. The various actions in method 400 may be performed in the order presented, in a different order or simultaneously. Further, in some embodiments, some actions listed in FIGS. 4a and 4b may be omitted).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to have modified the collaboration circle and communication document elements of Panigrahi, the employee survey elements of Chen and the organizational structure elements of Sabet to include the questionnaire generation elements of Rajaganesan in the analogous art of organizational surveys.
The motivation for doing so would have been to improve employee productivity by “creat[ing] a development map for employees to improve on common competencies, wherein the development maps may be made available to all employees to access and follow” (Rajaganesan, ¶ 39), wherein such improvements would benefit Sabet’s method which seeks to provide an improved “system and method for assessing a performance metrics...”, wherein, “…performance metrics are generated and processed using interaction and relationship profiles, feedback inputs, and career trajectory over time by combining aggregate data for a person and across many persons. More specifically performance analytics metric (PAM) identifies the typical career trajectory and the competencies, skills, and timelines adherent to obtaining career objectives for a person” (Sabet, ¶ 2), wherein such improvements would further benefit Chen’s method which seeks to improve the ability to “sort and organize users according to task efficiency and productivity, and can prioritize users (e.g., employees, vendors, customers, etc.), according to their efficiency, quality of work, and/or productivity.” (Chen, ¶ 114), and wherein such improvements would further benefit Panigrahi’s method which enables the ability to “incrementally benefit from timely feedback and need not wait for the completion of a review process to act upon important feedback, which could improve worker performance and overall enterprise productivity” [Rajaganesan, ¶ 39; Sabet, ¶ 2;Chen, ¶ 114; Panigrahi, ¶ 16].
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Kim et al., U.S. Publication No. 2020/0265365, discloses interactive electronic employee feedback systems and methods.
Sorenson et al., U.S. Publication No. 2018/0060512, discloses interactive electronic employee feedback systems and methods.
Adams et al., U.S. Publication No. 2021/0035048, discloses interactive electronic employee feedback systems and methods.
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/NICHOLAS D BOLEN/ Examiner, Art Unit 3624 /PATRICIA H MUNSON/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3624
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